Effective
by Thescarredman
Summary: John Connor is Cameron's reason for living. But he wasn't her first. NOT Jameron.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's note: apparently the synopsis, disclaimer and character list aren't enough warning, so I'm going to make a bald statement.**

**If you are one of those T:TSCC fans who believes John Connor and Cameron's relationship is romantic rather than codependent;**

**if you think Cameron is a 'real' girl trapped in a mechanical body, needing only a kiss or a declaration of love from her Prince to free her;**

**if you believe that their relationship is a love written in the stars, and no other is possible, believable or interesting...**

**Hit the back button now. There's nothing here for you. **

Van Nuys California  
December 7 2007

The TOK-model infiltrator parked her car around the block from Martin Bedell's address and shut off the engine. She had deliberately avoided first driving past, to deny her opponent any possible forewarning; now she sat in the quiet vehicle for a moment and scanned her surroundings for witnesses or surveillance before getting out to complete her approach on foot.

She surveyed the area as she walked, continually assessing and analyzing. The neighborhood was quiet, with no one out on the street or sidewalks. Young people usually made up the bulk of pedestrian traffic in residential neighborhoods, but this district showed little evidence of children: no toys in the yards or chalk marks on the sidewalk, no bare patches on the lawns bordering the concrete, even at corners. She examined the small neat houses, all similar in layout and built in a style popular twenty or thirty years previous, and surmised that the subdivision's houses had been bought new by young couples starting their families, couples who had stayed and paid down their mortgages and become middle-aged while their children, like Martin Bedell, had grown and gone.

The Bedell residence was set back a little farther from the street than the adjacent houses, and screened by mature bushes: just as had been described to her. She turned down the drive and followed its slight curve past the foliage. As soon as the house came into view, she could see that the T-888 had been there ahead of her: the front door was wrecked, sagging off its one remaining hinge. Not bothering to draw her Glock, she moved stealthily to the driveway at the side of the house, senses at maximum.

But, looking through windows, she saw no indication of occupancy, either human or cyborg. There were no vehicles in the driveway or visible through the garage windows. Although she knew Mrs. Bedell owned a Pomeranian, no crazed barking challenged her presence near the house. She entered through the ruined front entrance, leaving the door standing open, and began searching. Portions of the rooms were in a state of disarray consistent with a hasty search careless of leaving evidence, rather than of a struggle. Of Martin Bedell's parents, there was no sign; she deduced the Trip-Eight had arrived, tossed the house, and left, all while they were out. She doubted it would have lured them away or waited for them to leave, and she could formulate no reason why it would have taken them with it, nor why it would have bothered to hide their bodies.

An open phone book and photo album she found lying on the dining room table told her everything she'd come to learn. She immediately called Sarah. "The Triple-Eight has been to the parents' house. They're safe, but it's seen his picture and it's on its way to the school."

"_Get there. Find John. I'll call Derek_."

"I can be there in two or three hours," Cameron said, and disconnected.

But, instead of leaving the house and heading for her car, she studied the picture album, and its photos of Martin Bedell in his school uniform, marching and saluting and aiming a rifle. She turned back a few pages, and saw a ten-year-old Martin at a birthday party, looking thoroughly uncomfortable in good clothes. She turned forward a page, almost to the end of the book, and saw him as a smiling young man, posing with arms around a couple of late middle age, presumably his parents. She surveyed the room's furnishings, comparing them to the descriptions in her memory: she knew without climbing the stairs that the upper floor contained three bedrooms and a tiny bath, and that Martin's was the bedroom whose window was adjacent to the old TV antenna tower at the back of the house. She felt her actions fettered by a rare uncertainty: although she hadn't lied to Sarah, she was unsure whether she should actually drive to Presidio Alto, because she knew she was already there.

A woman's voice saying, "Oh, my God," and the squeaky yapping of a small dog pulled her attention to the door. Cameron turned to see the elders from the picture standing in the doorway, looking at her. The man held the source of the barking, a Pomeranian, which stared at Cameron with marble eyes as it continued giving alarm that something strange and dangerous was in the house.

"Excuse me for trespassing," she said. "I saw the door, and I thought someone might need help."

The couple's facial expressions switched from alarm to pleasure. "You're not trespassing, dear." The woman advanced, reaching for Cameron's hands. "As if we couldn't recognize you from your picture." Her hands clasped Cameron's and squeezed. "Welcome to our home, Alicia."

Santa Ana California  
June 6 2007

She walked down the busy, treeless sidewalk lined with little storefronts, scanning her surroundings without seeming to, assessing threats and gathering data. Humans in this here-and-now were busy and vital and unaware, very different from the ones in the world she'd left. In that world, food was strictly rationed, and the calorie allowance low enough to restrict unnecessary activity. The only time that humans downtime showed much energy was when they were fighting or running for their lives.

One large display window she passed offered flatscreen TVs in various sizes for sale. One unit was showing a news program. The events being described were local and not in her memory, but the date tag in the corner confirmed that her arrival late last night had been within acceptable parameters, just three hours before her target time.

This was the first of two planned temporal-displacement hops on her itinerary, the last of which should take her to John Connor in September of 1999. The Leader of the Human Resistance sometimes sent his operators to their final destinations in stages, so that their later assignments would be completed no matter what might befall them further in the past, or to complete a mission requiring the performance of tasks widely separated in time. Her original itinerary had been a direct trip to her primary objective, but there had been a last-minute change to provide a newly-established Resistance cell with vital information that had been unearthed after their departure uptime. When that mission concluded, she'd been instructed to drive to Carlsbad, a town just south of Camp Pendleton, and locate a certain man who ran an electronics store. The man in question was a bubble tech who'd been sent back years before to build a way station for time-hopping Resistance fighters, and would send her on to complete her journey.

Sending operatives in stages did entail a certain risk. Temporal displacement used copious amounts of power, but it required no more to displace someone a hundred years than it took to send them ten. Guidance was the limiting factor. The complexity of the calculations required for an accurate time-jump increased exponentially with the magnitude of the displacement, until precision was beyond even Skynet's advanced computers; an attempt to send a man back a century might send him back two instead, or ten. Pre-Judgment-Day technology was, at best, able to manage a margin of error of one or two months over a five-year displacement, and a year over a ten-year one. So time-travelers using multiple jumps tended to make the subsequent ones short. Calibration errors always resulted in overshoots, fortunately, so she wouldn't miss meeting her principal at the intended time and place, but an eight-year displacement from this departure point might overshoot by several months. Considering the importance of her primary mission, the itinerary change indicated that there might not be any subsequent bubble travelers scheduled for some time – or ever.

As she neared her objective, she passed another storefront window, this one displaying a selection of women's apparel. She paused to study her reflection: an attractive (judging by the glances of young males she passed) twenty-something girl with dark brown hair tumbling over her shoulders, dressed in jeans and a tank top. A bag large enough to contain a change of clothes bumped at her hip, hanging from her shoulder by a sturdy strap. Nothing about her appearance would elicit undue attention. Certainly no one would suspect they were looking at a machine intelligence sheathed in a living tissue culture engineered to mimic human flesh.

She had arrived naked, but not without resources. Many bank vaults had come through Judgment Day with their contents intact; the only difficulties lay in finding one whose currency hadn't been gathered for fuel and burned, and in finding a supply of usable banknotes whose dates of issue were old enough to avoid suspicion of counterfeiting. Humans had a number of places to safely carry small parcels through displacement, females especially; she'd arrived with several thousand dollars to spend at need. A parking-lot donation box had provided her with a hiding place for the night and clothing good enough to visit a store the next morning. And now, eleven hours after her arrival, she had everything she needed to blend in and move freely.

She arrived at the address she'd been given, a storefront much like the others, but with a second door that opened to reveal a narrow flight of stairs leading up to a second-story apartment. She made no attempt to be quiet as she ascended the stairs, and presently heard activity in the apartment above, including sounds she identified as those of weapons being readied.

She reached the door and knocked softly, three raps. Looking at the door's peephole, she saw shadows shift as someone on the other side examined her. A voice through the door said, "What is it?"

"John sent me."

"How do I know that?"

"Because if Skynet sent me, we wouldn't be talking through the door."

Locks clicked; she counted three. Then the door was drawn aside to reveal a man with a Browning Hi-power in his hand. Several steps behind him, another man held a shotgun in both hands, not quite pointing it at her. They both relaxed at their first good look at their visitor, a slender young girl of average size, unthreatening in appearance. Two other men in the room broke out in wide smiles. If her original programming were still directing her actions, she thought, they would have died with those smiles still on their faces.

"Come in, quick." The man at the door shut the panel and engaged the deadbolts. She examined the entry, and concluded that the deadbolts were ineffective: the door was steel, but hollow, and the hinges were conventional in size and number, screwed into a wooden jamb. She estimated that it would hold back a Triple-Eight for no more than a second or two.

"All right," he said. "Who are you, and why are you here?"

"I have information you need. Several technical experts not on your watch list." Many Resistance groups were tasked with, among other things, identifying and watching scientists and technicians developing AI software and hardware, no matter what the stated purpose. From her bag, she extracted a list she'd written down from memory that morning and passed it to the man with the Browning, who seemed to be the group's leader.

He examined the list and frowned. "A dental-supply company is doing AI? And-" His eyes widened. "You gotta be kidding me. _Sex dolls_?"

"It's a collaboration. The companies are engaged in a joint venture to produce lifelike human figures with sophisticated reactions to certain stimuli. It could be the forerunner to the infiltrator models' human-analogue programming."

"What does a dental-supply company want with something like this?"

"A training aid for dental students, a patient they can't injure. The company has already developed a practice mannequin that describes symptoms and responds to a limited number of questions. It also gags, squirms, and cries out when a mistake is made that would cause discomfort."

He scoffed and folded the paper. "Spose the love dolls do too. Jesus." He stuck out a hand. "Well, thanks. Horace Sullivan. Call me Sully."

"Hello, Sully." She chose a name automatically as she reached for his hand. "Alis…" She hesitated. Some subroutine she didn't recognize had abruptly weighted her random selection to drop it to the bottom of her option list. "Alicia." She pronounced it in four syllables, the 'i's' pronounced as long 'e's' and the 'c' as an 's'.

He smiled. "Don't like being called 'Alice,' huh?"

_Not 'Alice'_, she thought. _'Alison_'. Curious. "I guess not."

"Well, I don't care much for 'Horace' either, you might guess."

Sully introduced the other three men in turn. The one with the shotgun, Ben Miller, said, "Alicia, huh? I don't remember seeing you around HQ before we time-hopped."

"Special unit," she said. "We kept out of sight, mostly."

"Where are you staying?"

"I'm not. I have business elsewhere."

"Want something to eat?" Asked the third man, Jim Dyce. "Maybe we could go out, even."

"No, thanks. I just ate." She found the men's relaxed attitude disturbing. She was certain they'd been more alert and cautious down-time; they wouldn't have survived for over a decade after Judgment Day otherwise. But their return to the relatively safe and routine world of their younger days, it seemed, had lulled them.

Dyce patted his stomach, smiling. "Since we tripped, it's like I have to put something else in my belly as soon as there's room for it, like I gotta stock up before it's gone."

"No." She met his eyes. "If we're successful, you'll never go hungry again."

His smile disappeared. "Guess we'll find out in four more years."

A younger man who'd been watching her from the living room couch rose to offer his hand. Sully introduced him as Wilson Dyle. Instead of shaking her hand, he held on to it, and to her eyes as well, and offered her a smile that was different from the others'. "You don't remember me," he said softly. "Do you?"

She did not, which meant that any meeting between them would have to have been before her capture and memory scrub. But such a meeting was unlikely to be remembered by him with a smile, she thought, since she would have been trying to kill him. "No," she said. "I'm sure you're mistaken."

"I'm sure I'm not, _Alicia_." He let go of her hand, smile fading: disappointed apparently. He lowered his voice further. "We shared rations and a blanket in a back tunnel one night. You came to Iowa bunker with a message, and you didn't have a way back till next day. You really don't?"

She suddenly realized his mistake. Newer-series infiltrators' sheaths were usually modeled after real humans acquired by the machines. He must have met her human template before the girl's capture. The reference to a 'back tunnel' told her the nature of the relationship: couples often sought little-used sections of the tunnel network for sex, foregoing safety for privacy. Wilson was looking closely at her face: trying to discern whether she really didn't remember him or was pretending not to, she believed. His smile was gone now.

She drew on her store of social remarks, learned from association with future-John and his associates. "I'm sorry. It's wrong of me not to remember, but I don't." She took in the other men, who were privy to the conversation though they were pretending not to hear. "Sometimes displacement causes a temporary disruption of memory." A complete lie, but she believed it would suffice to bring the conversation to a close. It seemed a bad time to tell him she was a cyborg.

"Or maybe I wasn't as memorable as I hoped," he said, his voice stiffening. "I'm sure you've got guys hanging around you all the time." He began to step back. "You must have heard 'haven't we met somewhere before' about a million times."

"Not really," she said. She shouldered her bag. "I have to go now. Good luck to you all." She moved toward the entry. "You should reinforce this door. And get a dog."


	2. Chapter 2

Carlsbad California  
June 6 2007

"I'm sorry, trooper." The bubble tech was a man in late middle age: gray-haired, bespectacled, and thirty pounds overweight. He had been young and thin as a greyhound when John Connor had sent him uptime, just one subjective year –to her- before. But he'd been sent to nineteen-seventy, and had spent _his_ last thirty-seven years subjective far from the fears and privations of the War. His manner told her that he didn't recognize her from their brief meeting just before he'd transited.

He went on, "I never expected it to take so long, either. But I've had to bootstrap a hell of a lot of tech to get it this far, and material problems stop me cold for years at a time until I can find a source. Hell, some of this stuff, possession isn't even legal. I'm sure I'll be able to build a second one in a matter of months, once I finish the first one. But the first one's taken half my life."

She looked at the crude temporal displacement stage and the racks of off-the-shelf PCs wired together to form a processor capable of managing a time hop. "How much longer?"

"I'm almost there. Couple months, maybe. Three at the most."

She knew there were other time-travelers building future-tech equipment elsewhere and elsewhen, including displacement devices. But she'd been instructed to use this one, and there might be a reason that John hadn't told her about. The delay would make no difference to the date of her arrival at her final destination, of course, and her power cell would keep her running long after Judgment Day; she could afford to wait. She nodded. "It's all right. I'll be back."

Two days later, she was still in Carlsbad. She sat at a window booth in a little diner at a strip mall, an untouched grapefruit half on the table in front of her, and watched the people in the diner and outside in the lot; it was an excellent setting for people-watching, which was a directive of her programming. At the same time, she was considering how she might profitably spend the next three months. Her orders included a contingency plan for early arrival in 1999, but not for a delay in 2007. She had general instructions to protect John and thwart Skynet whenever and wherever an opportunity presented itself, but she had no idea where John was in this when. She had a list of research projects to check off that could be performed just as well here and now as in 1999 –or maybe not. Again, changing the plan would involve second-guessing the man who led the Human Resistance, a high-risk decision. She was considering the option of renting a storage space and going into standby for three months when she heard a voice beside her.

"Excuse me, miss."

She looked up and saw a young man in uniform. Not the uniform of any police or military organization in her data stores: although similar in cut and pattern to U.S. Marine woodland BDUs, the badging was not, and she was sure he hadn't come from the big Marine base to the north of town. Then she saw the ID strip over one shirt pocket, which read, 'BEDELL.'

She recognized the name immediately: Martin Bedell had been killed before she had come to John's service, but John had mourned the man's loss enough to speak of him frequently to her. This boy's age matched, and the uniform agreed with John's account of his friend's history. If he was who he appeared to be, then standing over her was the future West Pointer who would turn the Resistance into a fighting force capable of taking the battle to the machines, as John was the man who had given them the will and direction. In his own way, this man would be as essential to the survival of the human race as John Connor.

The young man smiled. "I know lame this sounds, but have we met somewhere before?" He extended a hand. "Martin Bedell."

She took his hand, smiling in return. "No. I'm sure we haven't. Alicia Phillips."

"Are you sure? I could swear."

"I've been hearing that a lot lately."

"All guys, I bet. Mind if I sit down?"

"No." When his smile faded, she added, "I don't mind."

His smile returned, and he sat opposite, setting the small bag in his left hand on the seat beside him. "What are you having?"

"Just water and grapefruit. And some peace and quiet."

His face fell. "And I'm bothering you, acting like a horny soldier on leave. Sorry, that just slipped out." He started to slide out of the booth, but slowly, as if waiting for a response.

"I don't mind," she said again; it was a stock answer when a human made a statement that her semantic analyzer identified as an apology or request for permission of some sort. She searched for a compliment to put him at ease. "I like your uniform."

"It's true? I always thought it was a bunch of BS."

"What?"

He grinned. "That girls love a guy in uniform." He settled back in. "I'm from the academy up the road. Presidio Alto. In town on a day pass."

She searched her files of cover-story options, looking for something suitable. "I'm visiting friends over the summer, before I start at Dartmouth." Dartmouth was a small, exclusive college located in New Hampshire, a small state on the East Coast; 'returning' to it would be a plausible reason for her later disappearance.

"Dartmouth? You must be a girl genius."

She shrugged her head. "Not really."

"Don't be so modest. I heard they're a need-blind school, and they get, like, twenty applicants for every one they accept."

This was more information than she had on file for the school; she decided it would be prudent to steer him away from the subject. "I'm sure Presidio Alto doesn't accept everyone who applies either."

"No. But the school turns down a lot of guys who're full of lame ideas about what the military is like." He glanced around. "So, where are your friends now?"

"I'm sightseeing. They didn't come with me."

And what kind of sights are you seeing in Carlsbad?"

She consulted her files of local tourist attractions, and found a single entry. "Legoland."

He snorted. "And what did you think of _that_?"

Taking a cue from his reaction, she said, "Not much."

"Hm." His eyelids lowered. "Sounds like we're both looking for something to do."

Martin Bedell wasn't her mission. But defeating Skynet was. Bedell seemed a likely target for pre-emptive termination by the machines; since she was forced to spend the next several unplanned weeks in this here-and-now without a required task, perhaps shadowing Bedell might be the best use of her time.

"Yes." She searched her memory again. "Do you run?"

-0-

"How … much …" Martin gasped.

She consulted her inertial guidance system as they pelted down the wooded trail, feet kicking up the fine sand that floored it. "Six hundred meters. Should we slow down?"

"No. Just go."

Two point eight minutes later, they reached the clearing near the park's vehicle lot that marked the start and end of the sixteen-mile nature trail. She halted and assessed their surroundings, looking for threats. Martin slowed to a walk, circling her, puffing and coughing. He bent, hawked, and spat. "Sorry."

"Sorry for what?" She scanned the lot and the trees all around, and judged they were safe from attack. The roof of a multi-story building was just visible over the treetops to the east: a possible sniper position. She placed herself between it and Martin, waiting for him to get his breath.

He looked up at her with his hands on his knees, wheezing. "Jesus, you're not… even breathing hard. You… said you ran. You didn't say you… were a marathoner." He coughed again. His face and limbs suddenly shone with perspiration. She filed the observation for future reference, as a reminder to direct her sheath to exude moisture during high levels of activity. She directed it to do so now, and a light sheen appeared on her skin.

She was unsure of the meaning behind his words, so she chose what her options list categorized as a safe answer. "I didn't? My bad."

Martin consulted his watch. "We ran sixteen miles cross-country in just over an hour and a half. I should be dead."

"You're very fit, Martin. Your life wasn't at risk." She had evaluated his performance during the run, and judged that Martin should be able to outrun a Triple-Eight for at least a kilometer on any terrain.

"No, just my pride." He blew heavily, grinning. "You look built for speed, but I didn't expect you to run like you could do it all day."

She could run for years, not that she would tell him so, of course. She unbound her ponytail and retied it, re-trapping a few locks that had come free. "I'm sure I could. I'm not tired at all."

Martin grinned as he mopped his face with a hand. "Endorphins. Nature's NOS." His sleeveless sweatshirt was soaked with perspiration. He noticed her regard. "I must look like a drowned cat. How come girls look hot when they're a little sweaty?"

"They do?" It seemed an odd observation; overheating was, after all, the whole point of perspiration.

"Well, you do, anyway." He pulled the damp material away from his skin and flapped it. "I was going to invite you out to dinner or a movie, but not like this. If I go back to the dorm to shower and change, I won't get back out." He looked hopefully at her. "I shouldn't ask, but I've got another change of clothes. Do you think your friends would mind if I used their shower?"

"My friends live in …" She searched memorized maps for the name of a distant suburb. "Palmdale."

"Oh."

An idea occurred, prompted by the map still displayed in her inner vision. "Hotel rooms have showers."

He stopped flapping his shirt. "Huh?"

"There's a hotel close by. I have money." She added, "But you'd have to sign the register." Her database for this here-and-now didn't include any forgers who might supply her with ID and, until this afternoon, she hadn't foreseen a need for any.

He studied her carefully for six seconds; his sudden tension made clear that she'd committed an error of some sort. "Maybe I'm a little slow on the uptake, Alicia. What am I being offered here?"

Cautiously, she said, "I'm offering to buy you a shower. So you can invite me out."

He relaxed. "You're a very hard girl to figure out. Anybody ever tell you that?" His grin told her he was joking.

Since it seemed appropriate, she laughed, just a short chuckle; she knew that a human's reaction to laughter changed unpredictably if it was too loud or went on too long. Socializing with humans was orders of magnitude more difficult than blending in; there were so few consistent rules, and so many instructions and variables to learn and keep track of. She noted that he was breathing almost normally now, and, still mindful of the tall building nearby, decided to move them under cover. "Let's move under a tree and talk."

"Yeah. A little shade would be good." He studied her again. "I know I'm beating a dead horse here, but I swear I've seen you before. You ever modeled? Been on TV, maybe?"

She shook her head. "Nothing like that. Maybe I have a twin somewhere." _Or my template strongly resembles her mother._ This couldn't be the same sort of mistaken identity as Dyle's; if her template had been born yet, the girl could be no older than a kindergartner.

Martin ran a hand over his close-cropped hair. "Call me old-fashioned. But if we go to a hotel, I'm paying for it." He seemed suddenly uncomfortable, and looked away. "We could take turns in the shower, if you've got a change."

Bathing was an infrequent practice downtime, but fresh water was plentiful in this here-and-now, and all the people she'd observed were clean and well-groomed. Nevertheless, Martin's tone and manner told her that he wasn't sure of her reaction to his offer. Was he embarrassed to imply that she was dirty? Or… perhaps he preferred she not shower for some reason, but was being polite? She considered a number of responses before saying, "Okay."

His demeanor grew even more cautious. "If we go a little upscale, pick a place with a restaurant … we could stay in and order room service. If you want."

She decided that the reluctance of his second offer was too strong to ignore. She turned toward her stolen car. "A movie would be best. I'm not hungry."

"Alicia. I'm sorry."

She stopped with a hand on the door handle. "Sorry for what?"

"Don't be like that. Look, if you want to forget the whole thing, we can part ways here."

What mistake had she made? She turned back to him and studied his face and posture, trying to determine what to say. He stood eye-to-eye with her, waiting tensely; even though he'd felt compelled to suggest it, she decided, he didn't really want her to leave.

"I don't want to do that," she said. Remembering his reaction to her earlier offer, she added, "Martin, sometimes you're hard to figure out."

He laughed, and she smiled in response, completely mystified at what had just transpired, but relieved at her apparent success at salvaging the situation. She almost suggested they share the shower to save time, but decided to leave well enough alone.

-0-

"You're really enjoying this?" Sitting beside her in the dark and nearly empty theater, Martin stared up at the screen. "It's not too late to see something else. There are six screens in this place. There's got to be at least one chick flick showing."

"What's wrong with this one?" She watched a screaming man on the screen staring down at the makeshift spear which had just pierced him through, blood jetting from his chest. She noted that a real injury so severe in that location would have punctured and pinned the diaphragm, making drawing breath to scream impossible.

"The production values suck. I've seen better acting in high school plays. The story is lame and pointless." Then he added, "Doesn't all the blood and gore bother you?"

"You're training for a military career. Does it bother you?"

"Senseless violence does. Career soldiers work to keep people safe."

"I'm sure you'll be good at it." She rose. "What's a chick flick?"

Twenty minutes later, in another theater, she felt Martin's arm settle gently around her shoulders. After a moment, he said, "Am I pushing too hard?"

The pressure of his arm was negligible; she was certain he was holding most of its weight off her. "You're not pushing hard at all."

"You sure? You seem kinda stiff."

"That's just the way I am."

"It's not the way you seem." His hand cupped her shoulder and pulled. It took her a moment to realize he was trying to draw her closer. She let him close the small gap between them until she was tucked into his side. "I'm really surprising myself right now," he said. "I'm not a skirt-chaser, honest to God. I haven't pressed a girl this hard since eighth grade. You just seem so …"

"Different?"

"It's not a line."

She didn't understand, but she knew that sometimes it was risky to ask for clarification in matters where knowledge was presumed; any but the most neutral responses could be dangerously revealing. She let her posture relax. "It's not?"

"Well… not _this_ time. Bad time to ask, but do you have a boyfriend?"

"No," she said. "Never."

"Never?" His tone of voice told her that he didn't believe; further, that what she'd said was unbelievable. She recalled that, in the tunnels, females her apparent age were seldom without mates, although some of those mates were very short-term.

"Not lately," she amended. "And not memorable."

His fingers moved gently up and down her shoulder. "Bad one, huh? Want to talk about it?"

"No." Again remembering the girls in the tunnels, she leaned her head over, nearly touching his. "I want to talk about you."

A peevish male voice spoke up behind them. "Then take it outside. We all heard enough already."

-0-

"Whoa. Have we really been talking for two hours?" Martin's regard shifted from his watch back to her face, where it had been for most of the time they'd been sharing this park bench.

Her internal clock registered an elapsed time of two hours, six minutes, and forty seconds since they had picked this spot and sat. "About." She had questioned him closely about his skills and training while steering the conversation away from herself. Nevertheless, he'd had many questions of his own, and she'd been forced to assemble an elaborate cover in exchange for her expanded file on Martin Bedell, future Lieutenant Commander of the Human Resistance. She concluded that, however they'd met, John had been very lucky to find him.

"I got to get back, or I'll miss evening roll." He grinned. "Wouldn't do for the Cadet Captain to get a demerit." He grew serious. "Can I call you?"

"No." When he frowned, she went on, "I don't have a phone."

"A girl your age doesn't have a phone?"

"I don't talk to many people."

He watched the pedestrians strolling by. "Lise, am I gonna see you again?"

She considered. "Can't I stay with you?"

He blinked, then smiled. "Err, no. Even in a uniform, nobody'd mistake you for a cadet. Stop teasing, I'm serious."

"When will you have another pass?"

"This weekend, if I keep my nose clean."

She reached up and drew a fingertip along the side of his nose. "So far, so good."

"Yeah. So far so great." He closed his hand, tipped her chin up, and brushed a thumb across her lower lip.

She put two fingers to her lip; she could still detect the warmth of his thumb's passage across it. "Why did you do that?"

"Because those lips were made to be kissed. But it's too soon."

More puzzling statements. She studied his face, trying to determine an appropriate response, but her inputs didn't generate any options. Instead, she said, "Can I drive you to school, then?" The trip from town to the Academy seemed a good ambush opportunity.

He grinned. "Only if you drop me off at the front gate. I don't want any of those characters to lay eyes on you. I'm worried enough about hanging on to you as it is." His eyebrows rose. "Wait, I didn't mean that. Well, yeah, I did, but I don't mean to say you'd …" He stopped. "I'm just digging myself in deeper, huh?"

"I don't mind." She added a small smile.

Ten minutes later, she brought the car to a stop among the trees twenty meters short of the school's gate. She said to Martin, "Is this close enough?"

"Perfect." He reached over the back of the seat for his bag and set it in his lap. He studied her, seeming to weigh a decision. "If you really want to see me again, I'll be at the restaurant on Friday, eighteen hundred."

She shook her head. "Meet me here at seventeen-thirty. I'll pick you up."

He grinned. "Guess I made an impression."


	3. Chapter 3

Santa Ana California  
June 10 2007

She ascended the stairs to the Resistance group's safehouse, just as she had four days before. But this time, before she was halfway up, the deep barks of a large dog announced her approach. The door above her swung open and Sully stepped through, pointing a shotgun down the stairs. His alarm changed to puzzlement as he recognized her.

She stopped and regarded him. "Hello, Sully. Did you reinforce the door?"

"Yeah." The shotgun remained pointed at her another second, then swung up. The dog continued sounding its alarm, a mixture of barks and growls and whining. "Somebody shut that mutt up."

"He won't be quiet as long as I'm close," she said. "Can we talk outside?"

He frowned, but passed his weapon to someone out of sight and started down the stairs. She turned and led the way. The dog's voice followed them all the way down.

Outside, she glanced up and down the lamplit street. Pedestrian traffic was sparse downtown on Sunday evening; they would be able to talk safely beside the door, which should make Sully less apprehensive than taking him far from his support group. She placed her back against the wall, both to reassure the man and to optimize her view of the street. She crossed her arms and placed the sole of one foot flat against the bricks behind her, assuming the most unthreatening posture reasonable to this setting. "I need your help."

He faced her. "What's wrong?"

"There's been a change of plans. I need to contact whoever supplied you with ID. Weapons too."

"What else?"

"Just the introductions. As soon as possible."

He scowled down at her from half a head's height difference. "What gives? That dog doesn't even growl at the mailman."

"He's doing his job. The one you got him for."

She locked eyes with the cell leader. She had heard that the eyes were the 'window to the soul'; she had no opinion on that, but she knew there was a great deal of information to be had from the muscles and skin around the eyes, as well as from pupil dilation and the appearance of blood vessels on their surface. It was important to have the earliest possible forewarning of Sully's reaction.

In a near reverse of his reaction at the top of the stair, Sully's expression switched from blank puzzlement to suspicion to alarm. He stepped back, an unconscious response; his hand brushed his hip in another. He opened his mouth, to speak or shout, or possibly just in surprise. He stilled when he realized Alicia was still leaning against the wall, waiting for him to digest her statement. "Is that a fucking joke?"

"No." She said in a lower voice, "We aren't all determined to wipe out the human race, Sully. And John did send me to you."

"Why tell me now?"

"Because you need to know it wasn't a false alarm. You can trust the dog's instincts."

The cell leader gathered himself. "What's your mission?" His tone told her that his help depended on her answer.

"Protection. A man who'll be vital to the Resistance after Judgment Day, if it still comes."

"Anybody I know?"

"Possibly. It may be best not to say."

He searched her eyes. "So Dyle was wrong."

She shook her head. "I think he must have met the girl I was modeled after."

"What happened to her?"

"I don't know." Her answer was literal truth and a deliberate deception. Though she no longer had any memory of the girl, she did have a working knowledge of the process used to create 'impostor'- type infiltrators. But it seemed a less-than-optimal idea to tell Sully, a man on whose help she presently depended, that the girl Dyle had coupled with had likely been captured by the machines, studied extensively to create the copy standing before him, and subsequently terminated.

Another searching look. "If I'd shot you in the face, would it have stopped you?"

"It would have endangered my mission," she said. "My protectee doesn't know what I am."

His face lowered. "How do you stay close to him?"

Alicia paused to consider her alternatives to telling the truth, and found none with an acceptably high confidence weighting. Feeling a strange unease of the sort she associated with programming conflicts, she said, "We're dating." She suddenly realized she'd brushed two fingertips across her lower lip.

He turned half away. "Now I know now why Command's got us watching guys who build sex dolls. Jesus." He reached for the phone on his belt. "All right. We'll go see them. Now. Just you and me. And if you ever need something else, call. Don't come back here."

Van Nuys  
December 7 2007

Martin's father, still holding the noisy dog, looked around the trashed living room. "Guess we'd better call the police."

"I did that," Cameron said. If the authorities arrived before she left, they would want a statement from her that included a show of ID, and she no longer had anything identifying her as 'Alicia Phillips'. "But they said they might not get here right away."

"Figures," the man said, tightening his grip on the struggling animal in his arms.

"Hal," the woman said, "why don't you put Butterscotch in his cage? He needs to calm down."

Hal disappeared into the back of the house, the little dog's alarm signals fading with distance but not abating. Mrs. Bedell began picking items off the floor and restoring them to their places. "Are you hungry, Alicia? I don't know what condition the kitchen's in, but I'm sure we can put something together."

Cameron bent and began gathering objects as well, choosing unbroken items and handing them to Martin's mother. "No, thank you. I ate before I came."

"Who would do something like this?" The woman said. "The TV and computer are sitting in plain sight. They didn't take anything." She noticed the thick photo binder on the table. "Thank God they didn't hurt this. Some of these can't be replaced." Mrs. Bedell flipped to the last page, and a smile lit her face. She turned the book around to show a hips-up shot of Cameron and Martin Bedell. His arm circled her waist, holding her close, and they were smiling.

Carlsbad  
June 15 2007

Martin, dressed in his black school uniform, passed through Presidio Alto's front gate. He saw Alicia through the windshield of her car thirty meters away, and marched up to her door, swinging a bag twice the size he'd carried before. She popped the door locks as he reached for the handle, and Martin gave her a wide smile as he settled into the passenger seat. "New car?"

"Just another rental." She'd stolen the last one, but now that she had acceptable ID, renting was a prudent alternative to theft. "What do you want to do?"

"There's a steakhouse on Encinas I heard about, unless you'd rather try something different."

"Anything you want is fine." She put the car in gear and headed toward Cannon Road.

"Not a picky eater?"

"No," she said, "but I won't eat very much, wherever we go."

-0-

"Don't eat much." Martin shook his head at the tiny appetizer portion on her plate. "My mom has a Pomeranian that eats more than you. You really don't want anything else? How do you stay alive?"

"Nuclear fusion," she said.

He grinned at that. "I almost believe it. If I'd known you weren't going to order a meal, I wouldn't have either. Now you're gonna have to sit and watch me eat."

"I don't mind."

He filled his fork. "This means you'll have to do all the talking."

She frowned. "What should I talk about?"

The fork hesitated on its way to Martin's mouth. "Is there anything you _don't_ want to talk about, in particular?"

"I don't know."

"You said you were taking computer science in school. What do you want to do with it when you graduate?"

"I'm particularly interested in artificial intelligence."

He gave her a crooked smile. "Building machines to replace people? You really think they'll ever do that?"

"It's possible." She added, "I don't think machines should replace people. But I think it could happen."

Martin inserted the fork's load into his mouth and chewed, eyes on her. He swallowed and said, "Depending on what?" He took another bite.

"Depending on how badly people want to survive." Remembering one of General Connor's favorite themes, she added, "And how badly they want to keep their humanity."

"A lot of people think soldiers are machines. They think we give up our humanity when we put on the uniform, just shut off our consciences and blindly follow orders. As if we don't care about right and wrong."

She shook her head. "You're not like that. You always do what's right."

"Sometimes it's not easy to know what the right thing is." He looked down at his fork and plate. "The men in my family have been coming to this school since the First World War. Most of them make a career out of the military, _then_ they retire and go into politics. Sometimes I feel like my life is all mapped out for me, and there's nothing I can do to change it."

She nodded. "You're not the only person who feels that way."

"Yeah. I guess a girl grad from Dartmouth has to deal with a lot of people's expectations." He took another mouthful. "What do your parents do?"

The answer came to her immediately, without a list of options to choose from. "My father is an architect. My mom's a music teacher."

"Uh huh." He gave her a closed-lip smile. "So you know exactly what I'm talking about." He looked deeply into her eyes. "It's amazing, how much we have in common, don't you think? Like we were meant to…" He studied his plate.

"Yes," she said. "Amazing."

-0-

Following Martin's instructions, she took a road that wound up a wooded hill to a clearing at the top, and wheeled the car into the gravel lot. The headlights swept over two other vehicles parked facing the rail at the far end, illuminating their interiors briefly. Each one contained a couple in the front seat, faces pressed together in a kiss. She parked between them, alert for any change in their behavior, but both couples went back to their activity after a brief glance.

Martin turned toward her and settled into the seat. "Nice view."

On the other side of the rail, the ground sloped steeply away; city lights spread out below. The site offered excellent visibility and little chance of an ambush, she thought. "Yes."

"Cold?"

"No."

He glanced past her at the car beside them. His manner seemed cautious, yet expectant, even eager. She had seen a similar anticipation in Resistance fighters waiting for an operation to commence. Something important was about to happen, she deduced, although she could see nothing around but the courting couples. She sat as quietly and unobtrusively as possible, waiting on whatever event Martin had brought them up here to witness.

After another minute, Martin said, "Lise, we don't have to stay here." He added sharply, "And for God's sake, don't say 'I don't mind'."

She found his attitude puzzling. He'd directed them to this spot, and now he wanted to leave. She was missing something. She saw him take another glance at the couple over her shoulder, and she thought she understood. She stared at the couple on Martin's side. "Should we be doing that?"

He started to speak, and hesitated. Finally, he said, "Not if you don't want to."

She studied the couple over Martin's shoulder. They were embracing tightly, their heads and arms and upper bodies in slow but constant motion, their hands wandering all over each other. She recognized the activity as 'necking' or 'snogging', which was often - but not always - a prelude to sex. From the movement of the flesh under their jaws, she was certain they were inserting their tongues inside each others' mouths. There might be a thousand signals passing between them she didn't recognize, and exposure waiting in any of them. And what if he indeed intended this activity as a prelude? Yet it seemed certain that Martin might be disappointed, even suspicious, if she refused.

He was watching her closely. "He must've been a real piece of work."

"He?" She said, frowning.

"The guy you broke up with. A blind man could see you're hurting, Lise. You're all closed off like there's a glass wall between you and the world. I know it's too soon – hell, I haven't moved this fast on a girl since junior high. I just want you to know I'm here for you."

She ran a semantic analysis of his statement. Then another, and another. She couldn't make any sense of it whatever. She searched her response-option files, but the only ones presently in queue were assigned such low confidence values as to be worthless. "Martin," she said, "I don't know what to do."

He reached for her and pulled her head to his shoulder. "It's okay," he said, his voice almost a whisper. He stroked her hair. "It's okay."

Doing nothing, apparently, was sufficient.

"Do you want to talk about it?"

"I don't know," she said into his neck. Remembering the couples flanking them, she decided she should be doing something with her hands. Martin's behavior seemed less aggressive than the other females' partners, so she followed his lead and simply placed her arms around him, just over the bottommost ribs. This enabled her to measure his vitals: his pulse was slightly elevated, blood pressure low-normal, respirations slow and very deep. His body-fat percentage was less than six percent. She slid her hands higher up his back, to place them over the upper lobes of his lungs: everything checked out to best of her ability to tell.

"Why'd you leave him? Did he cheat on you?"

She had no idea what 'cheating' on her entailed. But Martin was waiting for an answer. She said cautiously, "I didn't leave him. He sent me away." She'd been told that convincing lies included as much truth as possible.

He sighed and pressed her head more tightly to him. Her answer, apparently, was acceptable. She assayed another. "John. His name is John."


	4. Chapter 4

**Author's note - to all of you who faved and followed and sent PMs, and have been waiting for updates: my apologies. I posted the first chapters of this fic while still deeply involved in a collaborative project I thought was nearly done, but turned out very much not to be. That's over for now, so I can return my attention to this fic. I promise regular updates until the story concludes.**

Martin and Alicia stepped through the door into the hotel, the same small independent one where they'd rented a room for a shower the previous week, and crossed the tiny lobby to the desk. The same attendant stood behind it; Alicia could see that he recognized them, but he made no acknowledgement. But she noted that he gave them a key to the same room they'd used before.

Martin took the keycard in his hand and paused. "Well."

She stood silent, unsure what to do next.

"It's a three-hour drive back to Palmdale."

"Two hours, twenty-five minutes," she said. Then, looking at his face, added, "Or longer, depending on traffic."

"Maybe, you could call your friends and tell them you're staying over? I could get another room."

She had not yet evaluated the security at Martin's school, but she assumed as a working hypothesis that he was safer among his schoolmates, armed men who knew one another, than in a town full of strangers. When he was off campus, she judged, he was especially vulnerable – which was something of a dilemma, since he was leaving the sanctuary of Presidio Alto to see her. She needed to guard him as closely as possible in order to provide a net increase in his security. "We could share this room," she said, "if you want."

He regarded her for a moment, seeming deep in thought. A smile touched his lips. "I don't mind." He picked up his bag. "Which bed do you want?"

"Nearest the door," she said immediately.

-0-

Alicia sat on her chosen bed, listening to the shower run and thinking over her situation. And her wardrobe choices.

Martin's offer of a separate bed seemed to signal that he didn't expect sex to happen tonight. But she was unsure whether he intended that they go right to sleep, or do something else. She had a limited number of clothing items in her bag, and didn't know what might be appropriate to wear after her shower; humans downtime seldom stripped to bathe, and usually slept in what they wore during the day. She intended to study Martin carefully for clues when he emerged.

The water shut off. She heard the curtain rattle back, and the rasp of the towel as it was pulled off the bar. Cloth was rubbed against skin. A minute later, he muttered, "Fuck," and opened the door slightly. "Lise? I, uh, forgot to bring clothes in. Could you pass me my bag?"

Martin's cylindrical nylon bag lay on the bed. "Yes." As she gathered up the straps, an idea occurred. "Or I could just pass in what you want." Knowing what Martin chose before he came out of the bathroom might enable her to choose for herself beforehand, rather than wait and observe. She wanted to make no mistakes alone with him, and doubted a human female would show such indecision.

"No, no," he said quickly. "I'll just take the bag."

His sudden nervousness tripped an internal alert. "Okay. Just a moment." She eased the bag's zipper open and conducted a quick search. She'd expected to find a weapon, but Martin's bag contained only clothes and toiletries and three small foil packets. She recognized the last items as condoms, even though she had seldom seen them in their original packaging: like all manufactured items downtime, they were in short supply, and usually were washed, rerolled and reused until they broke. She closed the bag and brought it to the bathroom door.

The door was still partway open, though not wide enough to admit the bag. Through the gap, she could see the sink and, above it, the slightly steamy bathroom mirror. He was out of sight, probably behind the door, since that was the only portion of the tiny room not visible in the mirror's reflection. "Here," she said, lifting the bag and pressing it to the crack, waiting for him to step back and widen the gap.

Martin held his ground. "I, uh, saw you in the mirror."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I shouldn't have looked through your bag."

"No. I'm sorry." He cleared his throat. "I was thinking the night might go a little different, before I knew you better."

"I don't understand."

"_Jeez_, Lise." The gap widened as he stepped back, and now she could see him in the mirror, standing by the door with a towel wrapped around his waist. His arm reached around the door and through the opening to grasp the bag's handles. "I know you found the rubbers. If you change your mind and want to leave, I wouldn't blame you."

She hung on to the bag, and met his eyes in the reflection. "I don't blame you for anything," she said. "I think it's good to be prepared for any possibility."

He huffed, and she gave him a small smile. He drew the bag in and shut the door. Through its panel, he said, "You're amazing, you know that?"

A few minutes later, he emerged in gym shorts and a cutoff sweatshirt, to regard her sitting primly with her backpack in her lap. "Your turn."

"Thank you." She rose, bag in hands, and brushed by him to enter the bathroom.

He said, smiling, "Any reason you're taking your whole kit in with you?"

"Yes," she said, returning the smile. "I don't want you to look through my bag."

His smile stretched wide as she closed the door.

She set the bag on the sink and unzipped the main compartment, removing a Glock 17 and two loaded magazines and setting them on the toilet seat before reaching in again to pull out running shorts and a sleeveless shirt; after brief consideration, she added bra and underpants to the ensemble. She replaced the firearm and ammunition in the bag, zipped it shut, and showered.

When she opened the bathroom door, he was lying on top of the covers in his bed, looking her way. The television remote was in his hand, but the device wasn't on. She said, "Are you going to watch television?"

His eyebrows gathered. Then he seemed to notice the remote in his hand. "I was going to, when you went in there. But I kind of forgot." He set it on the stand between the beds. "You look like you're dressed to bolt out the door."

"Not without you." She crossed the foot of his bed to her own and lay down on top of the covers as well. Feigning sleep for several hours should be simple, she thought; she had seen countless exhausted humans lying prone in their peculiar standby state. She placed her palms under her head and closed her eyes.

Eleven minutes later, Martin said, "Lise? I know you're not really sleeping."

She opened her eyes. Martin was lying on his side, propping up his head with a palm on his jaw, watching her. She asked, "How did you know?"

"Nobody just … switches off like that. I knew you were lying there with your eyes closed." In a softer voice, he said, "It's okay, Alicia. Nothing's going to happen. You're safe with me."

"No one is ever safe," she said automatically, repeating one of General Connor's truisms.

Martin was silent for eight seconds, then: "God, I wish I could just hold you."

She considered. If she was going to spend the night in forced immobility, the best place for her would be close beside him, forming a hyperalloy shield between him and the door. She slid from her bed to his and lay on her side facing him.

With a heavy sigh, he slipped an arm under her neck and another around her waist, and pulled; she squirmed to help him draw her close, so that he wouldn't notice her extra weight. When she was snug against him, he began stroking her hair. "I really wasn't expecting this."

"I'm a hard girl to figure out," she said. She debated whether to risk suspicion with a question, then decided to ask: "Why did you bring three?"

"What?" His hand stilled. A moment later, he scoffed and shook his head minutely. "You love pushing my buttons, don't you?" He stroked her hair again. "I could never hurt you."

"I know." She closed her eyes. His breathing slowed and deepened, and she matched it as well as her construction and her respiration subroutine would allow. Presently his hand stilled again, and she deduced he was asleep. She turned her awareness to the small sounds in the adjacent rooms and the hall outside the door.

Two hours and twelve minutes later, she heard his breathing change. He stirred and his embrace tightened. One hand slid up under the back of her shirt to rest on the small of her back. He bent his head and kissed the bare skin where the top of her shoulder joined her neck. With a soft sigh, he went still again, and didn't stir until dawn glowed faintly around the edges of the curtained window behind her, admitting a trickle of light into the room.

When Martin woke, they went for an early-morning run at the same park as before. Then they returned to the hotel for showers and a change of clothes and a visit to the hotel's complimentary 'continental breakfast'. Martin smiled at her scant selections – a croissant and a half glass of apple juice - but said nothing. They sat at a tiny bistro table and talked, smiling between bites.

Martin reached for her right hand and held it. She recognized the gesture as part of the human courtship ritual, but wasn't sure of the proper response. It was a common lovers' gesture downtime to touch each other's inner wrists with their fingertips as well, to feel their pulses. If he did that…

He said, "What's wrong?"

"Wrong?"

He gave her hand a small squeeze. "I'm holding a flipper here. You don't like PDAs?"

"PDAs?"

"Public displays of affection," he said. "Damn, Phillips."

"Oh." She curled her fingers around his, holding his fingertips well away from the base of her wrist. "Sorry. I was thinking."

After checking out, they walked the streets of Carlsbad's small retail district downtown, hand in hand, and window shopped. After a time, Martin gave her a lopsided smile and suggested a trip to Legoland, which turned out to be an amusement park with rides and games, shops and eateries, gardens and paths, interspersed with exhibits recreating famous scenes and landmarks constructed of tiny interlocking plastic blocks. By studying the informational material provided with her admission, she learned that these 'Legos' were a common toy for children in this here-and-now. Why anyone would build a park showcasing them, however, was not explained.

They strolled the palm-lined brick paths that led from one section to another. Martin reached for her hand again; this time she clasped it quickly. He said, "Having fun?"

"Yes," she replied automatically, returning his smile. Remembering his reaction when she'd mentioned Legoland the first time they'd met, she went on, "I didn't expect to."

He swung their clasped hands. "Guess you can have fun anywhere, if you're with the right person."

There were other visitors to the park, nearly all families with children. She studied them, trying to fathom their behaviors as they wandered from exhibit to exhibit, or leaned over the railings to point at one Lego structure or another. "Everyone seems happy," she said.

"Not quite," he said, gazing at a woman and child coming out of a gift shop twenty meters ahead. The child, a female three or four years old, was bawling loudly and pulling hard against the grip of the adult holding her hand. The woman seemed angry and embarrassed, but seemed helpless to put a stop to the misbehavior. In the tunnels, such a disturbance, even by a youngster, would be curbed as forcefully as necessary, and not just because of fear the noise would lead to discovery. The underground bunkers were a close, tense environment; riots had started over smaller incitements than a child's screams echoing through the passages.

"Kids," Martin said, watching the woman struggling to control her temper as the little girl slapped at her arm. "Some people shouldn't reproduce."

The probability was high that woman and offspring both would be dead on Judgment Day; that they would be dead thirty days later, even higher: the bombs had killed without preference, but in the period immediately following Skynet's initial attack, women and children had died in disproportionately large numbers. Social order had vanished, and most of mankind had gone feral as the sky darkened and scant resources dwindled further. The strong preyed upon the weak, and unattached females and minors had starved, died of exposure, been robbed and killed, enslaved and worked to death. Scattered humanity's numbers had shrunk nearly to extinction levels, mostly from the scarcity of fertile females, before leaders had emerged to organize the survivors and re-establish the rule of law.

Throughout this process, Skynet had remained dormant, convinced that the threat posed by humanity had been dealt with, content to let Man himself finish what Skynet had begun. Only when it became probable that humanity would not destroy itself did the machines appear, and Skynet renew its effort to wipe out the human race.

Downtime, pregnancy and childbirth were rare occurrences. Children were a serious liability in the post-Judgment Day world. Scarce food made bringing additional mouths into the world undesirable. Also, human society was still largely a fugitive society, dependent on running and hiding for its continued existence: mobility was a survival asset that was considerably degraded by pregnancy or a dependent child. Adults with children were much more easily caught and killed.

Even after the machines were defeated, the survival of the race would still be in doubt. Every male and female whose reproductive ability had not been stolen by the bombs would be needed to expand the gene pool – "breed like rabbits" was the term often used by future John and his aides with whom he discussed that next hurdle. But irradiation from the initial attacks and radioactivity still lingering in the soil and water guaranteed a very high incidence of birth defects. Resources, particularly food and medical care, would remain marginal for years to come; the survivors of Judgment Day and Skynet's campaign of extinction would have to be Spartan in their culling of any newborns unfit to survive unaided and reproduce.

"Maybe the time just wasn't right for her." Alicia watched the flushed woman dragging the struggling little girl toward the bathrooms. "It's hard being a parent."

Martin scoffed. "So, you want kids someday?"

Possible responses shuffled through her mind, one after the other being discarded after a few milliseconds. She reached the end of her option list, requested more, and the same choices presented themselves, no more certain than before. There were too many variables to calculate accurate weighting for an optimal selection.

After two thousand milliseconds of silence, Martin turned to study her face. His brow creased. He opened his mouth to speak.

She said, "I can't have children."

He paused, as if he were now the one sorting options. Two seconds later, he said, "I'm sorry, Lise." His grip on her hand tightened twenty percent. "But you can still adopt, right?"

She returned the pressure. "Yes. I could still adopt."

They were now nearing the back of the park. She heard a sound through the trees ahead: heavy wheels rolling swiftly on a hard surface, accompanied by screaming. She stopped, bringing Martin to a halt as well. Her free hand rested on her purse.

He said, "What's wrong?"

"I hear screaming up ahead."

He smiled. "It's just the coasters. Come on." He tugged her toward the sound.

Around the next bend, the path ended at a one-story wall pierced by a wide opening filled with turnstiles, beyond which she could see a small crowd of waiting visitors. Rising thirty meters into the air behind it was a complex array of tubular rails and girders. A train of open cars rushed past atop the structure, revealing it to be an elevated railway of sorts. The train consisted of six cars bearing a dozen screaming passengers. It crested a rise, slipped down the other side, and disappeared.

She turned to her companion, who was also watching the cars. "Where does it go?"

"Just around one of the lagoons and back through the trees, I guess. Doesn't look very long."

Several teenaged visitors came out the turnstiles marked 'EXIT'; they grinned at one another, turned, and entered the structure again.

Martin was looking at her. "What's wrong? Don't you like roller coasters?"

"Do you?" She temporized. Wherever this 'roller coaster' went, it looked like a very poorly-designed means of transportation.

"They're as much fun as you'll find in this place." Another train, different-colored from the last, slipped up and over the rise, accompanied by a chorus of howls and screams. He pulled her toward the entrance. "Come on. Let's get the front car."

As they waited in line, she studied the small crowd waiting to board the train: mostly people Martin's age, though the ends of the bell curve appeared to bottom out at sixteen and sixty years of age. Coasters were widely popular, apparently.

From behind her, Martin's arms loosely circled her waist. "You're sure a people-watcher. What are you thinking?"

"I'm wondering why so many people want to board a train that doesn't go anywhere."

He gave her a brief squeeze, bringing her shoulder blades in contact with his chest, and her buttocks with his pelvis. "Sometimes the trip is more important than the destination. It's why you run, right?"

Sixteen minutes later, they were standing on the platform waiting for their train to arrive. When it slid into the station and came to a stop, Alicia studied the faces of the passengers as they unbuckled and climbed out of their seats: most were smiling, and many hooted with pleasure as they disembarked and walked off. But a small percentage simply looked relieved.

She and Martin sat side by side in the first car. Attendants made sure they were belted in, and a restraining bar locked down over their shoulders. She felt heightened concern for Martin's safety with him trapped and immobile. She tested her restraints, making sure she could break out of them quickly at need, and redoubled her surveillance of their surroundings as the car lurched out of the station and began to climb.

"Hey, why so nervous? This is just a kiddy ride. You act like you never been on a roller coaster before." A moment later: "Lise, _have_ you?"

"No."

They reached the crest of the hill; the car began to nose downward. "Hoo boy."

The train accelerated, dived, and turned, then rose again, paused, and plunged downward once again. Howls and screams filled her ears. The car's motion reminded her of a mission she'd participated in, an assault on a Skynet stronghold by air. The chopper had taken several crippling hits on the way in, and the vehicle's movements through the air as the pilot desperately tried to avoid a crash were very similar. The helicopter had come down hard enough to kill three of the TechCom troopers she'd been riding with.

Two minutes later, the train returned to the station amid hooting and other exclamations from the passengers. Alicia noted the scrutiny that those waiting on the platform gave the returning riders. What were they looking for? While they waited for the attendants to release them, Martin said, "Well? How was it?"

"I'm not sure," she evaded.

"You didn't act scared at all." He sounded almost disappointed. Martin seemed to care about her well-being; why would he want her to be frightened?

Her puzzling observations suddenly congealed into realization. She had often seen Resistance fighters returning elated from a dangerous patrol or risky mission: not because of any success they had achieved, but simply from having come back alive. The ride had provided simulated danger, which triggered a euphoric release from fear when the passengers arrived safely at the end. These people, four years from the end of the world, were such complete strangers to peril that they cultivated fear for entertainment.

The bar rose, and Martin unfastened her belt. "Lise? You okay?"

"Yes." She stood and stepped up onto the platform. "If these people had ever been in real danger, they wouldn't think being scared was fun."

He followed her down the path leading to the exit. "I should have asked before I put you on it. It just didn't occur to me."

She paused at the turnstile. "You didn't do anything wrong, Martin."

"Something happened to you," he said in a low voice. "Didn't it? Tell me, Lise, please."

"I can't tell you."

"Was it him? Did he hurt you?"

She shook her head for emphasis, hoping to end the conversation. "No."

"Okay," he said, clearly not believing her. Had the exchange made him suspicious? But then he smiled. "Let me make it up to you."

He led her to a bench and bade her wait. A minute later, he returned with a soft-serve cone. "Best in town. Don't say you're not hungry, it's been hours since you had that roll."

She eyed the cone: the amount of dairy product on it would certainly overload her storage capacity. Should she accept and throw half of it away, or refuse outright? Neither seemed like an acceptable way to treat Martin's offering. Then, ten meters behind her expectant companion, she saw a young woman strolling by with a cone of her own, in the company of a young man. The girl took a lick, then, smiling, brought it to the boy's mouth; he licked it as well.

Alicia reached for the cone. "Will you share it with me?"

-0-

"Well," Martin said, "here we are again."

"Yes," she said, "here we are."

They were sitting in her rental car twenty meters from Presidio Alto's front gate. The time was 1747 hours: thirteen minutes before the end of Martin's twenty-four-hour pass. He said, "You never called your friends. Are they gonna be hot?"

She puzzled over his question. She now knew that 'hot' could denote sexual allure as well as temperature, but neither definition seemed to fit. "I don't think so."

He hesitated, then said slowly, "I've been thinking. I'm up for a weekend pass. There's this little camping resort I used to go to when I was a kid. Just a bunch of cottages, a little lake, and a million trees, fifty miles from anywhere. I haven't been there in years. I thought, maybe, we could…"

"Yes."

He smiled. "Okay." He brought his face to hers, but stopped a few centimeters from touching lips. He held the pose for a second, then said, "Don't you want to? It's okay, but you've got to tell me."

She said, "I don't want to make a mistake."

"Everybody makes mistakes, Lise. You learn and move on." He drew back a few centimeters to look in her eyes. "But sometimes the cost of a mistake just seems too much to risk. I get that." He began to lean back, but stopped at the touch of her hand on the back of his neck. "You sure?"

"Not really," she said. "If I do something wrong, please don't be upset."

He smiled and, instead of kissing her, drew his thumb across her lips. "To me, nothing you do is ever gonna be wrong."


	5. Chapter 5

Saturday June 16 2007

Alicia didn't start the car, even after Martin disappeared through the gate. Instead, she sat with her hands on the wheel, still and unblinking as a mannequin, sorting options and making plans.

It was approximately three hours until dark, and at least five until she conducted her nightly patrol of the school's grounds. Presidio Alto, while a military academy, was not a military base: its perimeter defense consisted of a six-foot fence and pairs of cadets, armed only with radios, who walked a path inside the barrier day and night at set intervals. The fence ran through a wooded area to the north which offered easy entry and concealment.

She had been dismayed to learn how little protection Martin truly enjoyed at Presidio Alto. Breaching its perimeter had been a matter of waiting until the cadet patrol passed out of hearing, then scaling the fence, a procedure which took two and a half seconds. Tearing a hole in the mesh would have been even quicker, and she was sure a Terminator come to kill her principal wouldn't waste any time avoiding traces of its passage; it wouldn't even have waited for the patrol to pass by.

Inside the grounds, there were no armed guards – no armed men at all, except on the ranges, and only during the day. On the march and while drilling, the students' rifles bore blue banding on their magazines, signifying that the rounds were dummies and the weapons as harmless as props. At night, her Glock might be the only loaded gun in the entire school.

Once inside the perimeter and out of sight of the patrols, she roamed the grounds almost freely. She haunted the rifle range, the obstacle course, the trails, and the outlying buildings without significant probability of discovery. On the campus proper, with its occasional foot and vehicle traffic and lighted windows, she slipped silently through the shadows between the two- and three-story buildings, observing and analyzing. She'd identified the classroom and administrative buildings, library, commissary, and dormitory, and theorized how and when a Terminator tasked with killing Martin Bedell might approach them all. She very much wanted to locate Martin's dorm room, but couldn't formulate a plan to do so without an unacceptably high risk of discovery. She'd spent hours watching the dorm from cover, studying the occasional faces that appeared in the windows, but had never spotted him.

Alicia started the car and drove away. She had five hours minimum to make preparations for a weekend with Martin, and a number of things to do.

First, she found a rundown motor lodge that advertised weekly rates and acquired a room. Her growing inventory of possessions was entirely in the rental's trunk, and she cleaned up and changed in filling-station restrooms. The arrangement was sufficient to her needs, but Martin would likely have unsupervised access to the vehicle sometime over the weekend, and shouldn't be allowed to suspect she was living out of her car. She had considered renting a bay at a storage facility instead, but every one she could find closed at night, and she preferred someplace with twenty-four-hour access. Also, the bathing facilities would be convenient.

Next, far less certain of what she was doing, she drove to a women's clothing store she'd visited before. Females her age in this here-and-now owned a wide variety of clothing, and changed garments frequently. She needed to purchase apparel appropriate to a weekend date at a lake resort. What that entailed, exactly, she didn't know. Perhaps there would be other shoppers she could observe.

The store was large, but not part of a mall, and sparsely attended on a Saturday evening. Throughout the sales floor were a number of banners, signs and wall hangings depicting young women engaged in various activities wearing the store's merchandise, which she had used as a purchasing guide on previous visits.

She almost passed the 'Athletic' section where she'd hurriedly purchased clothing and shoes for her first run with Martin, but one of the wall pictures made her pause. It showed a smiling girl canoeing through still water, paddle poised in the air for a stroke; her male companion, sitting behind her and also smiling, had his plunged deep in the water. The model's clothing was similar to items Alicia already owned, except for a pair of rose-tinted sunglasses and a white slouch hat. She searched through the racks, finding the missing items and making them her first purchases.

The next picture to trigger speculation showed a girl sitting on a log in front of a campfire, sipping from a mug. There was nothing Alicia could do to extend her capacity to store liquids, but the model's flannel shirt reminded her that a 'lake resort in the middle of nowhere' would likely be up in the mountains, where nighttime temperatures could be uncomfortably cool for an unprotected human. A flannel shirt and sleeveless vest joined the items in her bag. She noticed the girl was wearing hiking shoes rather than Alicia's usual crosstrainers; she made a mental note to pick up a pair when she reached the shoe section.

The next section contained swimwear. She paused at the racks, unsure. Recreation at a lake seemed likely to require water activities and getting wet. But, like all others of her kind, she was much denser than water; any attempt at swimming would reveal her nature, even if she managed to keep her head above the surface. She studied the photographic displays, and noticed that the swimwear models, whether indoors or out, hip-deep in water or ashore with no water in frame, all had dry and carefully coiffed hair. Apparently there were numerous activities requiring swimwear but not immersion.

With an eye on the displays, she began searching through the racks for matching items. Swimwear came in a wide variety of colors and styles; there was considerable difference in coverage as well. But if there was a reason to choose one suit over another, she couldn't deduce it from the pictures.

The first one she found was similar to one worn by a model lounging in a recliner chair, a smiling male companion in swim trunks hovering over her. She examined it: a two-piece ensemble briefer than her underclothes, in a light shade of purple. She weighed it in her hand: 143 grams. The material was very thin.

"Can't decide?" A salesgirl hovered nearby. "Or do you need help with sizes? Sometimes they're different from dress sizes, especially two-piece, but that one's a string tie, it's sure to fit."

Alicia turned to the girl. "Would it be okay for a lake?"

A line appeared between the girl's eyebrows: a sign of concentration, puzzlement, or distress. "Well, sure, as long as you don't get it wet."

Clearly this was something Alicia had been expected to know. "Oh. I guess I wasn't thinking." So, her guess had been correct: some 'water activities' didn't include immersion – even actively avoided it. If she wore this suit to the lake, would it be an acceptable signal to Martin to avoid the water? She draped the suit over her forearm. Hedging, she said, "I'll need one I can get wet, too." Wondering if more information was necessary for making a choice, she added, "We're spending the weekend."

"Hm." The girl smiled. "With someone special?"

"Yes." She added, "It's a date."

The smile widened. "First time?"

"Not our first date. But our first weekend."

"I see," she said in a tone of voice Alicia couldn't categorize. She turned to a nearby rack and selected another two-piece. "Black's one of your colors too. This'll look great on you. But it covers a little more, and it won't stick to you like a coat of paint if it gets wet. That way you can choose how much bait to dangle."

Alicia didn't understand. Were these fishing outfits? She glanced at the pictures again, but no fishing gear was evident in any of them. "Thanks," she said neutrally.

The girl's tone changed. "I'm sorry. Am I reading something in? Or just being nosy?"

"I don't mind," she said quickly, adding a smile to reassure her. "I'm just not sure what I'm doing with him."

The salesgirl's smile returned. "Think maybe you're getting in over your head?"

"I don't know. I hope not."

"He must be _seriously_ hot."

Was Martin Bedell 'hot'? She was sure the girl wasn't inquiring about his body temperature. The definition Martin had offered for her fictitious friends in Palmdale, one having something to do with being wronged, didn't seem to fit. That left sexual allure. She recalled Martin's hints that he had had a succession of sexual partners since 'junior high', when he would have been in his early teens. "Yes," she said. "Very hot."

"Known him long?"

She paused. How long was 'long', in these circumstances? "Eight days, seven hours, twenty-three minutes."

The girl tittered. "Like that, huh? Hasn't got a brother, has he?"

What difference would the size of Martin's family make to her swimwear selection? They weren't coming along. Humans' family dynamics were a mystery and a puzzle to her; Martin's stories about his life with his 'folks' raised as many questions in her mind as they answered. "He's an only child."

"Hm." The girl dropped her chin, regarding Alicia through her lashes. "So… are you sharing a room?"

"It's a cottage," she said. "In the woods."

"Cozy."

"He used to go there when he was a kid."

"Ohhh. He's sharing that? He sounds serious about you."

Alicia recalled John's stories: Martin Bedell was serious about everything. "He is."

"Well, best of luck." The girl turned toward the counter.

"Wait."

She turned back, eyebrows raised.

Alicia glanced at another clothing section, one with pictures of women spread languorously on shining sheets in what appeared to be lace swimsuits, or lounging on sofas wearing half-open robes that revealed their undergarments, and a sign saying 'Lingerie/Sleepwear'. "I could use a little more help."

Friday June 22 2007

The drive to the Bide a Wee Resort took them north and eastward into the mountains. The road grew narrower, twistier, and more poorly maintained as their elevation increased and signs of civilization grew more infrequent. Trees lined the road on both sides ever more thickly, as if the road had been cut through an ancient forest.

Martin had insisted on driving, since he knew the way. He seemed to grow more relaxed with every mile. He lowered his window, put an elbow on the sill, and breathed deep. "Smell that? Nothing in the air but sunshine, pine sap and wildflowers. Something, huh?"

"Yes," she said, lowering her window as well and feeling the breeze lift her hair. "Something." Their destination was isolated, and one which Martin hadn't visited in years; it was highly unlikely that Skynet, even if it was seeking him out, would have any spies or snares there. And his familiarity with the area might enable him to more easily spot something out of place. It had seemed a much more secure location than Carlsbad for him to spend a weekend, which was why she had promptly agreed to go.

Oncoming traffic thinned to almost nothing. The winding road restricted her view ahead and behind, but they weren't overtaking any vehicles. They seemed to have the road to themselves.

Martin grinned at her. "Man. Didn't realize how much I missed this. Feels so good, just getting away from it all." He reached for the power knob of the radio. "Want some music? I suppose you dig classical." His tone told her that he hoped not.

"Not really," she said.

"That must be a disappointment to your mom."

"It's okay. It just isn't my favorite."

"What do you like, then?"

She said, "Play what you want. I'm sure I'll like it."

He turned on the radio and began cycling through channels. "Don't laugh." The radio began playing a light dance tune with a pronounced beat – 'pop' music. "I just get tired of marches and concert music at school. And I've never been into metal."

"I don't mind." At the widening of his nostrils, she added, "Really, I like it."

A car horn tooted behind them. A small SUV appeared from around the last bend, overtaking them quickly; Alicia watched it carefully. It also contained a couple, the male driving. The windows were down as well, and the female was riding slumped in the shotgun seat, one bare foot sticking out the open window. The vehicle swung over into the oncoming lane, and the girl smiled and waved as it drew alongside. Martin waved back, and it went by. It swung back into the lane in front of them and accelerated away, disappearing around the next bend.

Martin grinned at her. "Guess they're getting away from it all too."

Twenty minutes later, a sign appeared, fashioned in the shape of an arrow pointing left, bearing the words 'BIDE A WEE'. They turned onto a wide gravel road. A mile later they came to another intersection, and a similar sign, this time pointing right onto a rutted dirt track with grass and wildflowers growing down its center. Martin grinned. "See? Middle of nowhere."

After a hundred meters, the track bent in a gentle curve and was lost to sight. Martin followed it around until it opened up abruptly. He slowed the car, frowning.

Her hand dropped to her drawstring purse, a cloth sack which held her Glock. "What's wrong?"

He looked out the windshield at the scene before them: a twenty-space gravel lot, nearly full of cars, fronting a large wooden building with a roofed wraparound porch. "That's the camp office. There wasn't anything in front of it before but a turnaround. We parked on the grass. I don't remember seeing more than six cars here." He shook his head. "Time doesn't stand still, I guess."

"No," she said. "It doesn't."

Martin brought the car into the lot. Behind the building, the surface of a small lake sparkled with sunlight. Around and behind the building was a close-trimmed lawn, the only grass in sight; the area around the lake was heavily wooded, the trees growing right to the waterline in spots. Gaps in the foliage revealed small log cabins among the trees.

Martin parked and shut off the car. "Let's see what they've got."

There were three wooden screen doors opening onto the porch facing the lot, each with a small hand-painted sign above it: 'OFFICE', 'COMMON ROOM', and 'DINING HALL'. Martin said, "It's American Plan here. The nearest diner's a long ways off. Want to see the common room?"

"What is it?"

"Just someplace the guests can mingle. It's got a fireplace and tables and a closet full of games." He made a face. "No TV when I was here last. Probably got a sixty-incher with satellite now."

One of the attractions of this place was its seclusion. Ideally, the two of them would stay in the cabin and venture outside it as little as possible. She didn't intend to spend the weekend mingling with guests, and would be visiting the dining hall only with Martin. It might be best to avoid letting the desk clerk get a good look at her as well. "I think I'll just take a look around outside."

She followed him up onto the covered entrance, but when he went inside, she followed the porch around the building instead. She kept her pace unhurried, pretending to stroll while surveying their surroundings.

She paused at the rear of the building, whose back wall also had three doors, and looked out over the lake. The lawn extended from the back porch to the shoreline thirty meters distant. Directly behind the building, a wooden dock jutted ten meters out into the water. Several rowboats bobbed alongside, tied to cleats on the decking. Another, in the middle of the lake, cut a gentle wake across the surface as its occupant rowed smoothly through the water. It occurred to her that, aside from the open water, this building was the most exposed position at the resort, visible from all along the shore. The cabins, on the other hand, would offer a wealth of observation points from concealment. Hopefully Martin would acquire one that offered a view of their present position.

She heard a door behind her creak open. She turned as Martin stepped out and let the screen door, pulled by its overhead spring, slap back into the jamb. He slipped an arm around her waist and looked out over the water. "Nice, huh?"

She nodded. "Nice."

In a different tone he said, "Should've called ahead. There was only one cabin left. It's all the way across the lake, and the road ends here."

A cabin across the lake would offer a perfect vantage point from which to watch the lot and main building, and give her the earliest possible warning of suspicious visitors. "I don't mind."

He looked away. "There's only one bed. But I can take the couch."

She searched his face for clues to the meaning behind his offer. She saw a certain amount of apprehension, but couldn't determine the cause. "What's wrong? Is the bed smaller than the ones in the hotel room?"

His mouth twitched. "Bigger, actually. But just because we sort of shared a bed once … well, I didn't want you to feel pressured."

She nearly said, 'I don't mind,' but something in his demeanor, so like that he'd exhibited in the car on the hilltop, stopped her. Perhaps a similar response was called for? She slipped her arms around him and rested her head on his chest. He let out a breath and held her tight, affirming her proper reading of the situation.

"Well, okay then," he said mildly, running his fingers through her hair. "You ready to go?"

"Yes." The sooner they were off the porch the better.

His embrace loosened, but he kept one hand at the small of her back. "We'll have to hump our bags through the woods. Hope you packed light, or I might have to make a second trip."

"It's all right," she said. "I'm stronger than I look."

"Don't doubt it."

The main trail, which circled the lake, was a footpath carpeted with pine needles, broad but tree-shrouded, with only occasional patches of sunlight, and walled in by undergrowth. Crossing and branching paths gave them glimpses downslope to the water, or led up into the deeper woods. From time to time, a rustic cabin would be partly visible through the foliage.

"Kind of like the cross-country course at school." Martin shifted the shoulder strap on his bag and turned his head to smile at her. "Better scenery here though."

A young woman, presumably another camper, appeared around a bend ahead of them, headed their way. Alicia's initial interest sharpened further when she recognized her: the passenger in the car that had passed them.

The girl gave them a polite smile as she approached. "Hi," she said without slowing as she passed. Alicia, shouldering her own duffel as well as her purse, turned her head and tracked the girl until she was out of sight.

Six minutes later, he said, "Here we are," and turned down a branch path. Ten meters in, it ended at the door of a rustic wooden cottage.

Martin turned the knob without using a key – she noted that there was no deadbolt, or even a keyhole in the knob – and swung the door wide, waiting for her to go in first. She did so, with one hand inside her bag, and paused to survey her surroundings.

The floorplan was open, measuring about five meters by ten. The couch, fireplace and bed, the cabin's main furnishings, were visible from where she stood. A tiny space reserved for food preparation held a small refrigerator and microwave with a sink and short counter between them. The only interior door opened, she presumed, into the bathroom; humans in this here-and-now were attached to their privacy while bathing and eliminating their wastes. A curtained window faced the lake; she drew the drapes wide, and was rewarded with a tree-hemmed view of the water, and the sight of the camp office on the opposite shore, as well as part of the lot and the road leading to it.

"What do you think?" Martin stepped in and shut the door. "Not the Hilton, but …"

"It's perfect."

After nightfall, Alicia sat on the big couch in front of the flickering fireplace, pretending to watch the flames but listening intently to the night sounds outside the cabin. Martin lay on the couch with his head in her lap. It was a position she'd seen often between couples downtime, and it was an unsuspicious way to keep him low and partly covered by the couch's back. She ran her fingers through his short hair as he talked.

"Too bad it's cloudy," he said. "I bet we could see a million stars this far from the city."

"Yes," she said. "At least."

"My parents live in Van Nuys. Old tract house, two stories, with three little bedrooms and a bath crammed into the top floor. There's a big TV antenna running up the back wall right next to my bedroom window. When I was a kid, I used to climb out after lights out and scale the tower, so I could stretch out on the roof and look at the stars." He grinned up at her. "When I was older, I used it to climb down instead."

She gave him the smile he expected, and he gently grasped her upper arm, caressing it. "Not that I was home much. I've been at Alto since I was thirteen." He looked thoughtful. "Almost ran away from home when they told me they were sending me."

"But you didn't."

"No." He took her hand in both of his, examining it. "So, what kind of trouble did you get into when you were a kid?"

She searched for an answer. "I got in a lot of fights."

"With boys?"

"Yes. With boys."

He grinned briefly. "A tomboy. Should have known." He settled his head deeper into her lap. "The trails here go for miles. It's where I first got into running. You're gonna love it, Lise. It's so quiet. The ground's so springy you can't even hear your steps. You just glide along. It's like being in another world."

"Are they crowded?" She asked, remembering the girl on the path. She had no means of concealing her pistol while dressed in running clothes.

"Didn't used to be. Guess we'll find out."

"Can we run early? I don't like crowds."

"Soon as we get up." He reached up and brushed a lock of hair off her forehead. "What is it you see in me?" He said wonderingly. "What made you take the chance?"

She held her silence, at a loss for an answer to a question she didn't understand. But some sort of response seemed called for. She gazed down at his upturned face, searching for clues in the half-lowered eyelids and soft smile. She smiled in return and, judging that gesture to be insufficient, brushed a thumb across his lips.

"Hm." He grasped her wrist and kissed her palm. With his lips still on her skin, he said, "Fire's about done. Throw on some more wood, or let it go and turn in?"


	6. Chapter 6

Alicia paused at the bathroom door. Behind her, the night light next to the sink sent her shadow through the open doorway into the main room beyond, and added its glow to the meager light from the dying fire. Martin lay in bed waiting. His eyebrows flickered as he took her in.

She said, "Is something wrong?" Her immediate concerns were twofold: the first was whether Kerri the salesgirl had provided her with sleepwear appropriate to the occasion. A long talk with her had been inconclusive, full of hidden assumptions that Alicia didn't dare ask for clarification on. In the end, she'd purchased two very different sleeping costumes. She'd narrowly selected this one to wear tonight after a complex calculation with a large number of shifting variables and a wide error margin that actually made the decision nearly random. She studied Martin carefully; at the slightest sign of disapproval or suspicion from him, she would retreat to the bathroom and put on the other outfit.

He smiled. "I just never figured you for a Disney girl."

She straightened the hem on the knee-length cotton sleepshirt adorned with the cartoon image of an improbably large litter of spotted puppies. "Do you like it?"

His smile widened. "You look adorable. You wear that every night?"

"Yes," she said. The black lace 'teddy', she decided, would probably stay in the bag for the weekend. "Every night." She approached the bed. "What is this?"

Her second concern was Martin's arrangement of the bedcovers. He had turned back the covers on the unoccupied side of the bed - on the side nearest the door - exposing the fitted sheet. But she could see that he was lying on top of the sheets with only the quilt covering him.

"'This' is a little insurance policy," he said. "In case I get a little frisky while I'm dreaming about you." He beckoned her to the bed. When she lay down, he pulled the covers over her, and kept his arm across her shoulders. The other slid between her neck and the mattress, cradling her head in the crook of his elbow. His hands met and cupped her shoulder. "Comfortable?"

"Yes." A sheet and blanket separated them. "Won't you be cold?"

"Not even a little." His lips brushed her ear. "How do you feel?"

The night sounds outside were minimal, with no sign of disturbed wildlife. It was highly improbable that any witnesses to their visit here would be captured by the machines after Judgment Day and divulge the information. If any Terminators were active in the Carlsbad area, they were not tasked with hunting Martin Bedell: her campus patrols had revealed no sign of intrusion or surveillance by other parties, and the news programs had reported nothing there or from Van Nuys to trip her alarms. They were alone here, and would stay that way unless they somehow drew a great deal of attention to themselves.

She placed a hand over his. "Safe."

He tightened his grip and kissed her just below the ear. "It's a good feeling, huh?"

"Yes," she said, turning her head towards him even though the positional change muffled one of her ears against the pillow and damped her hearing by ten percent. She smiled. "Very good."

Saturday June 23 2007

"You're getting antsy again." Martin sipped his coffee. "We don't have to stay."

"I'm not restless. Just curious." Seated across from her companion, Alicia scanned the dining hall and its occupants. The plank-floored room was six meters by eight, with a dozen four-place round tables, all occupied and nearly full. But judging by the number of cars in the lot and the cabins she'd glimpsed in the woods, the resort had at least twice that number of guests. "Where are all the others?"

"Waiting for the next seating, I guess." He took another sip and nodded toward the breakfast buffet. "They'll serve for another hour or so, then close to clean up and start dinner." He smiled behind his cup. "Chicken and dumplings on the bill of fare tonight, best I ever had. I used to scarf them up till I could hardly walk. Might even tempt you, Nuclear Fusion." He glanced down at the tablespoonful of scrambled eggs and quarter slice of toast on her plate. "If not, I get your share."

"Okay."

He sipped his coffee. "So, what do you want to do today?"

They'd already run five miles through the woods. She'd wakened him at first light, and they'd negotiated a pine-needle-floored path that wound its way up into the hills and through dense original-growth forest. She had let Martin lead, both because he knew the trails and to let him set the pace so as to avoid overtaxing him. They'd encountered abundant bird and animal life but no humans. At one point, Martin had stopped abruptly, reflexively signaling a halt and quiet. She'd moved to his side, senses on full combat alert, to see a doe twenty meters up the trail regarding them curiously.

He'd grinned at her, and she'd smiled in return, not understanding, but wary of asking: the deer had posed no threat, yet Martin had seemed reluctant to disturb it. He'd slipped an arm around her waist, and they'd watched the creature until it had dropped its gaze and ambled into the woods.

She touched the rim of her glass of juice to her lips. "I don't know. We could go back to the cottage."

He scoffed. "We're not honeymooning, Lise. We spend the day in the cabin, we might as well have stayed in town."

'Honeymooning' was not in her vocabulary, but spending as much time out of sight in the cabin was the optimum choice. Would it be reasonable to suggest they honeymoon? Not until she consulted a dictionary, she decided. Martin had mentioned a shelf of books in the common room, a small lending library: perhaps she would find one there. "Can we see the common room?"

He grinned. "Sure."

The common room was the same size as the dining hall, and even more rustic. The walls and ceiling as well as the floors were planked. There were three more tables, as well as several cushioned chairs and loveseats flanked by side tables covered with magazines. A stone fireplace, unlit, graced one wall. There was no television.

"Heh. They haven't changed a thing. Even the same scruffy couches," said Martin. He wandered into the room, and Alicia followed.

One of the tables was occupied by four people playing cards; two more sat in chairs reading. None of their physiologies matched her records of current or past infiltrator models. She continued to study the room.

There were doors at opposite ends leading to the front and back decks, and another opening set into an interior wall that must be the closet Martin had mentioned. One wall was adorned with framed photographs, many of them black-and-white pictures detailing the camp's history. The wall opposite bore several shelves supporting rows of books … and a number of curious plaques displaying the severed heads of animals.

A pair of deer heads, one male, one female, gazed blankly out over the room. Alicia studied them, puzzled. Martin had taken such pains to avoid disturbing the deer this morning. But someone else had killed two of them, it seemed, for no better reason than to mount their heads on a wall.

Skynet sometimes displayed the bodies of Resistance leaders it captured or killed in combat, hanging them from the windows of ruined skyscrapers or some other high point. It was intended to demoralize the human fighters, but her own observations of their reaction to such displays seemed to indicate the opposite effect. Perhaps, she thought, the humans she'd observed were behaving in an atypical manner because of the machine in their midst watching. Or perhaps Skynet and the Grays who advised it didn't understand feral humans as well as they thought.

Martin's arm slid around her waist. "I like them better out in the wild than hanging on a wall."

"So do I. Why are they up there?"

"Guess you'd have to be a hunter to answer that. I never got into it. I'd rather get my meat from the market. It's a lot cheaper."

She rested a forearm on his shoulder blade, and a hand on his shoulder: perspiration, electrical conductivity and pulse all within normal limits. "What if there weren't any markets anymore?"

"You mean, like, if there's a zombie apocalypse?" He pulled her a little tighter. "Well, then, I guess I'll get into it in a hurry." he noticed her regard of the bookshelves. "Looking for something to read? Tired of the company already?"

"No." Most of the books were paperbacks, but half the shelf space was taken up with bound volumes, some done in leather or some similar material, and lettered in dull gold. She touched a few one and read their titles: _The Call of the Wild, White Fang, The adventures of Sherlock Holmes.._. She nearly pulled one out of the row to examine it: _The Time Machine_. "These look old." Another caught her eye: _Taber's Unabridged Dictionary._

"They were here when I was a kid. I think they've been on the shelves since they built the place." He pulled her gently to the other side of the room, to the framed photos. "Check this out." He touched the glass of a color picture showing a man and boy about to step off a dock onto a rowboat. "That's me and my dad, I think the last summer we came up here before I enrolled at P Alto."

She studied the boy in the photo: about thirteen, with the same short sandy hair and blue eyes, face a bit rounder, grinning at the camera.

"Got an idea," he said, letting go of her. "I need to visit the office."

"Okay. I'll wait here."

She looked up 'honeymoon': _The period of conjugal bliss immediately following marriage._

She looked up 'bliss': _Extreme pleasure; joy and happiness._

She looked up 'conjugal': _Having to do with marriage and couples; intertwined, conjoined._

She looked up 'conjoined': _joined together, linked._

She looked up 'intertwined': _twisted tightly together._

Alicia stood staring down at the open book, thinking deeply. The dictionary led her in a circle without explaining anything. 'Honeymooning' was clearly one of those subjects which humans understood innately or learned without formal instruction. She knew of only a handful of subjects which humans approached in this manner, chief among which were sex and death. She applied her holistic analytical subroutines to the vague definitions she'd encountered.

Couples. Twisted together, joined, experiencing extreme pleasure. She remembered the couples from the overlook, and others she'd interrupted during her patrols in the tunnels. Honeymooning, she decided, was a variety of sex.

But honeymooning, if her research had not misled her, was sex that followed marriage: a lifelong contract between two individuals for cohabitation, shared resources, and reproduction – a solemn promise which she was certain Martin would take seriously. But Alicia would be out of his life forever in six to ten weeks when she stepped into the TDD.

The War had begun in betrayal – by whom, it was not entirely clear, though almost all humans maintained that Skynet struck first. Betrayal of humans' trust was basic to her design, hardware and software both; breaking a promise to Martin, especially if done for his own good, fell well within her programming directives and should present no conflicts.

Therefore, it was puzzling to realize she was reluctant to do so -especially since the factors weighting the decision were unclear. She was aware that some, possibly a great deal, of her programming was hidden from her; this wasn't the first time she'd encountered an unexpected - and unexplained - programming directive such as the one enjoining her from using 'Alison' as an alias. She assumed there were reasons for the hidden programs that she shouldn't know. But she was a learning computer, after all, and imbued with an analogue of human curiosity, which led to speculations.

Attempting sex with Martin still carried the possibility of committing a grave and revealing error, but that possibility didn't seem to be weighted as heavily in her decision hierarchy as it once had been. Did she feel more confident in her ability to perform convincingly, or did she now believe Martin more likely to overlook and forgive any mistakes?

Martin returned. "Looking something up?"

"Not really," she said, replacing the book. "What do you have in mind?"

-0-

Alicia stood at the end of the dock, looking down into the rowboat rocking gently at the end of its tether.

"It'll hold us," Martin said, smiling.

"I know." She weighed considerably more than a human female her size, but no more than a large man. She was sure the two of them wouldn't overload the little craft. But Martin's proposed excursion seemed an unnecessary risk. It would take them out in the open, visible from all around the lake and the nearby hills, and far from cover should they come under attack. Though she still believed it unlikely that Skynet would be looking for the future General Bedell here, the middle of Bide a Wee's lake was still where she least wanted the two of them to be.

"The lake is pretty deep for its size," he said. "The basin is shaped kind of like a skillet – flat bottom, steep sides, about twenty feet deep all over. Great fishing." He paused to regard her closely. "Don't tell me you're afraid of the water."

"I don't swim very well."

His face dropped. "We don't have to do this. I just thought it would be fun."

The disappointment in his voice was very plain. How many times, she speculated, might she disappoint him before he no longer sought out her company? That would make her a much less effective bodyguard. "I think you're right. It will be fun. Let's go."

"You sure? If you'd rather not, there's still the beach." He pointed across the lake, to a small section of sandy shoreline and a line of buoys ten meters from shore. "Doesn't get above chest high till you're past the buoys." His voice was carefully neutral.

"Maybe later. Let's get in."

His smile returned. "Okay." From the boat, he picked up an orange cushion with a hole near one end and split down the center, and a long adjustable strap and snap buckle; he handed it to her. "Put this on."

She began to read the printing on it: _TYPE II FLOTATION DEVICE, COAST GUARD APPROVED FOR CALM INLAND WATERS._ It was far too small to lie on, and looked like it would sink under the weight of an adult human, much less a cyborg.

"Lise, are you from Kansas? Here." He took it from her hands and slipped the hole over his head. "Like this."

Then she understood. The device was intended only to keep the swimmer's head above the water, to prevent drowning; the swimmer's body, nearly equal in density to the surrounding water, would provide most of the buoyancy.

Martin removed it and hung it off her neck. "I know, it looks small, but it works." He stretched out the belt, which was a meter and a half long. "See? Made to go around somebody twice your size." He circled her waist with the belt, snapped the buckles together and drew it tight. "Every guy watching us right now wishes he was this life jacket."

Alicia glanced around, but no one appeared to be watching them; she deduced Martin had used a figure of speech, connotation unknown. She smiled, for lack of a better response.

They set off, her on the little bench in back looking forward, and him on the wide center bench, facing her and smiling as he rowed backwards with smooth, sure strokes, heading for the center of the lake.

She noticed that Martin was sitting on a second life jacket. "You're not using your life jacket."

"Yes, I am. It makes a great seat cushion."

"Why aren't you wearing it?" She asked.

"Because I'm a Red Cross swimmer," he said. "Also, because I don't like em."

"What if you're knocked unconscious?"

"Pretty unlikely, don't you think?"

"It still seems a sensible precaution."

He smiled. "Back _off_, Phillips. Nobody likes a nag."

The oars clunked in their pivots as they swung back and forth, and from their tips water fell, tinkling, as they rose out of the water and dipped in again. Alicia noted how refraction bent their image; she began to use her observations to calculate aiming corrections for an underwater target, but something overrode the impulse, and she returned her attention to her surroundings. She could hear birdsong, faintly, and now and then a voice from shore. She heard a splash, and turned her head to see a black tailfin disappear beneath swirling water ten meters from the boat. The morning sun rose above the trees behind them, warming her skin and making Martin's short hair appear to glow. The shadow of the rowboat's pointed prow stretched out ahead of them on the calm water.

"What are you thinking about?" His eyes were nearly the same color as the sky, she noted.

"It's so quiet."

"That's part of getting away from it all, I guess. You don't really notice the noise until it's gone." He rested the oars on the sides of the boat, letting the vessel coast. "If the sky's not cloudy tonight, you won't believe how many stars you can see with no city lights to wash them out. Or how close they seem." He lifted the boat's small mushroom-shaped anchor and dropped it over the side, letting the rope trail through his fingers as it paid out.

She looked over the side. The water, though clear, disappeared into shadow without revealing the bottom. A meter or so beneath the surface, a forearm-long fish swam by, seeming unhurried. She adjusted her light filters, and the water brightened, showing several more fish and a muddy bottom six meters beneath the surface.

A splash, and a few drops of cold water touched her face. Martin grinned, arm hanging over the side and a hand in the water. "Earth to Lise. There aren't any sea monsters down there. Dip a hand in."

She did, and noted that the water was just twenty degrees Celsius, unexpectedly cool for Southern California in late June.

"Pretty cold?"

"Yes. It is."

"The water's all snowmelt from the mountains. Won't get really warm for another month. The swimming beach is a lot warmer, though. The sand – _pahh!_" He sputtered as a handful of water covered his face.

She grinned and flicked another handful his way, soaking the collar of his shirt. He threw his hands up in front of his face. "Enough, already. Unless you're ready to take this a _whole _lot farther."

Since he was smiling, she assumed her response was acceptable, but did he really want to stop or was he challenging her to escalate the contest? "Are you? The water's pretty cold."

He made a show of looking her up and down. "Wouldn't mind seeing you soaking wet. Maybe later."

He reached inside his button-front shirt and brought out a small parcel wrapped in one of the dining hall's brown paper napkins. "Check this out." He unwrapped it, revealing a breakfast biscuit, somewhat crumbled. He tossed a small piece over the side of the boat, and it floated briefly before it began to sink. A fish rose to the surface to snap up the morsel, raising a brief splash and attracting others. Martin dropped another piece in, and the site was full of dark shapes jumping and wriggling over one another for the prize. When it was gone, they remained just under the surface, moving in tight circles; some pushed their snouts out of the water, as if ready to catch the next morsel in their mouths.

Martin grinned, the rest of the biscuit in his hand ready to throw. "Watch this. They'll beat the water to foam for the next one." His expression changed to a frown. "What's wrong?"

The fishes' behavior reminded her of food distributions in the bunkers, especially after the tunnel rats had been forced to go on short rations for awhile due to machine activity topside making the surface too risky for the scavenger teams. She'd seen people beat each other senseless over a meal no larger than the one still in Martin's hand. "They're so hungry."

He huffed and said gently, "Lise, look at them. They're huge. They're getting plenty to eat. They're just greedy assholes. They'd act the same way if I dumped a bagful of biscuits overboard."

"Oh." She took a bit of dough from his hand. "Thank you for explaining." She tossed it over, and watched the creatures struggle to claim it. She caught him looking at her. "What's wrong?"

He shook his head, smiling benignly. "You're just so sentimental. Feeling sorry for fish." He tossed the last of the biscuit far from the boat, and the fish disappeared.

"Not exactly." She tried to think of another explanation he might accept, but lacked data to weight her options. That was the trouble with interacting with humans. There was so much trial and error involved. Difficult enough when dealing with one who knew what he was talking to, but when –

On a wooded hilltop behind Martin, she saw a flash.

Emergency subroutines took over her movements. She sprang at her principal to cover him. The boat rolled under her, and she was in the water, the life jacket scarcely slowing her descent to the lake bottom.

A splash above her, and she saw Martin above her, treading water as he turned all around. Looking for her.

Still sinking, she unfastened the life jacket, judging it easier to explain losing it than to explain why it hadn't worked. It shot up to the surface, bobbing two meters from Martin's scissoring legs, just as her buttocks and heels made squishy contact with the lake bed.

He plunged under the surface, eyes wide, searching, but he didn't acquire her: the bottom of the lake was too dark for human eyes to see. He swam towards the bottom, almost directly beneath the orange jacket floating on the surface. Just above her, he turned toward her, then away for a few strokes, then took an abrupt right turn, searching blindly.

Alicia recalled her estimates of Martin's lung capacity from their runs, observed his efforts and agitation to determine his metabolic rate, and concluded that he was nearing the end of his oxygen. If he did not head for the surface within the next minute, he would be in serious danger of drowning.

How could she save him? And without breaking cover?

The anchor sat buried in the mud between them, its rope leading up to the boat six meters above. Martin's quartering search turned him back towards her. She walked to him, her feet churning up the bottom, and grasped his hand through the murk.

He seized her wrist blindly, and began thrashing toward the surface, though he made no upward progress, being firmly anchored to the bottom by her weight. Towing him through a cloud of silt, she walked three steps to the rope and grasped it with her free hand.

Martin wound her arm around his neck and touched her opposite shoulder, sliding his fingers down her arm to locate her other hand, and touched the rope. His eyes widened in recognition, and he pulled her hand free and put both her arms around his neck. Then he began to haul them both up the rope hand-over-hand. She removed one hand from his neck and, keeping it unobtrusive at waist height, helped pull them up. Martin, gaze fixed on the hull of the boat overhead, didn't notice.

Their heads broke surface, and Martin pulled in whoops of air. She panted as convincingly as he could. After several breaths, he put her hands on the rail of the boat. "Hang on!"

He swam to the other side of the boat. Her side rose briefly as he tumbled in, then he was grasping both her wrists to pull her aboard. She felt a brief alarm, certain he would notice the extra weight. But he brought her over the side as if she were a child – hysterical strength, she surmised. She rolled into the bottom of the boat, and he was kneeling over her, wild-eyed. "Are you okay?"

She cleared her throat a little, the closest approximation to a cough she could produce. "I'm okay."

He grasped one wrist and rubbed her arm rapidly. "What happened to your jacket?"

"I adjusted it. I guess I didn't snap it together right."

He let go of her arm and reached for the other. "Jesus, what was I thinking, bringing you out here? I almost got you killed. God, your skin is like ice. And you're pale. You've got hypothermia for sure."

Her infiltration sheath was living tissue bonded to her hyperalloy chassis. It produced enough heat to approximate normal body temperature under ordinary circumstances, but being only one to twenty-five millimeters thick, it was sensitive to large changes in ambient temperature. However, given time and warmth it would recover quickly. "I'm okay," she repeated. "How do I look?"

He paused, perplexed. "What?"

"You said you wanted to see me soaking wet. How do I look?"

"Like a drowned cat." He brushed her wet hair off her forehead. "Lise, I'm so sorry. I knew you were afraid. I made you come anyway. I'm such an idiot."

His distress demanded an attempt to reassure him. "Martin. I wasn't afraid."

"Don't try to kid me, Lise. I saw how you were in the boat."

"I mean when I fell in." She held his eyes. "I knew you'd come for me."

He stared hard at her. She grew uneasy, thinking her response might have been inappropriate or entirely unbelievable. In a world before cyborgs, what might he think? That she was insane, or deliberately trying to deceive him for another reason? What would he do?

He gathered her in his arms, pulled her up hard against him, and kissed her.

She sorted options for half a second, then put her arms around his neck and opened her mouth, as the girls in the cars at the overlook had done. His tongue entered her mouth, caressing her tongue. She reciprocated, leaning back to pull him down into the boat, hiding them from the hilltop and the mysterious flash. After seventeen seconds, he pulled back and stared into her eyes again.

She said, "How did I do?" She was surprised to hear a hint of instability in her voice, a slight quaver – caused by the cold, possibly.

He kissed her again.

A nearby voice startled them both. "Hey! You two okay?" They lifted their heads to see a middle-aged man in a boat three meters away, hands on his oars.

"Yeah," Martin smiled down on her. "Just fine."

"Saw you fall in from the dock. Scared piss outta me, I didn't think you were gonna come up."

"All good. Really. Nothing to worry about."

"You lost an oar. Want a tow back?"

Martin brushed a thumb firmly across her lower lip. "Thanks. Think we had enough fun on the water for awhile." He got up on his knees and pulled at the anchor rope.

As they rode back sitting side by side on the center seat, she said, "What do you want to do next?"


	7. Chapter 7

"You look better," Martin said as she emerged from the bathroom, toweling her hair in shirt and shorts.

"Better than what?" Alicia said, lifting her damp hair to dry the back of her neck.

"Better than a body fished off the bottom." He was wearing jogging shorts, barefoot and bare-chested, waiting his turn at the shower. He took her in his arms again, and she dropped her towel to circle his neck with her arms. "Mm. Warm again too. Definitely think we should stick to the swimming area from now on."

"I don't mind."

He chuckled. "I bet you don't. Surprised I haven't scared you away from the water forever." He gave her a peck on the lips, then brushed a thumb across them. "Kay. Did you pack a swimsuit?"

"I packed two. But I'm not sure which one I should wear."

He gave her a tiny smile. "Maybe I could pick one for you?"

"Okay." She reached for her bag. "Should I show them to you, or put them on?"

He smiled wider and sat on the edge of the bed. "Oh, like I'm gonna turn down _that _offer."

She paused, uncertain which choice he'd made. Then he said, "Take the whole bag in the bathroom again?" And she understood.

"Yes." She retired to the makeshift dressing room and changed into the black swimsuit.

When she came out, Martin's eyebrows rose. "Hoo," he said softly. "Turn around, slow?"

She complied. When she was facing away from him, he said, "Stop. Lise, would you lose all respect for me if I sound like a male pig for a second?"

Another turn of speech, unless he was actually going to imitate the grunt of a pig. "I don't mind."

"_Damn, _girl." He gave a short sharp whistle. He added, "Maybe I don't need to see the other one."

She preferred that he pick the other costume, since it would preclude swimming activities. She looked over her shoulder at her reviewer. "Are you sure?"

His smile wavered as his gaze traveled up to her face and met her eyes. "No, all of a sudden."

She returned to the bathroom and laid the black swimsuit aside, then got out the purple one. She'd tried it on once before, because wearing it properly had required making some alterations to her infiltration sheath – specifically, shaving.

"_You'll almost have to go Brazil for this one_," the shopgirl had said, spreading the handful of purple cloth on the counter. "_Hope he's worth it_." Alicia had thought at first that Kerri was suggesting a trip; the girl, smirking, had explained.

Her infiltration sheath was as convincing as Skynet's science and the Grays' advice could make it. That effort had included a number of small scars and imperfections - and body hair. Shaving, like bathing, was an uncommon practice in the world she had left behind, and her human template had apparently been captured in her natural state. But early in 'Alicia's' residence in this here-and-now, she had noted that females removed the hair under their arms and on their legs, and, prompted by second glances by strangers when she had worn shorts and a sleeveless shirt, had done likewise.

Since her hair did not grow, and, once removed, never grew back, she was as sparing in its removal as possible. But in the clothing store, Alicia had listened carefully to the salesgirl, asking as few questions as possible to avoid suspicion, and learned that local esthetics and the demands of swimwear fashion required even more depilation. She had returned to her rented room and applied her razor to the fine dark hairs between her thighs that would be revealed while wearing the non-immersible suit. She hoped that grooming conventions would not require hair in any of those places at her next temporal displacement.

She turned the lower section of the purple suit around carefully to align it properly – most of the material was strings – and attached it, tying the knot high on her hips as the model had worn it. Then she tied the top portion at neck and back and adjusted the two small patches of cloth in front – they didn't fully cover her breasts, but they hadn't covered the model's either, so she just duplicated the coverage zones.

Martin's voice came through the door. "You okay in there?"

"Yes. I'm coming out." She opened the door and stepped through, and found herself nearly toe to toe with him.

Martin's reaction was very different from the one he'd exhibited with the first suit. Instead of his eyebrows rising, his chin lowered and his lips parted. "Uhhh," he breathed, taking half a step back but remaining within easy reach.

She turned slowly, as she had with the other outfit, brushing against him. Turn completed, she looked over her shoulder at him, trying to gauge his reaction. "You don't like it?"

"'Like' is such a weak word." He exhaled heavily and turned his head, focusing on the wall. "I think I'm supposed to say it doesn't leave anything to the imagination, but…"

She frowned. "But?"

"But it leaves me imagining all kinds of things. You haven't worn this before, have you?" He was still breathing heavily, she noted. Was he angry? None of the other physical signs of anger were present.

"No," she said. "I bought it for this trip."

"Uh huh."

Uncertainly, she went on, "I didn't know how things would go."

"Been changing my mind about that three times a day since we checked in. Lise, you aren't seriously thinking of wearing that outside the cabin."

"Yes, if you want. But I can't get it wet."

"Hell, no, you can't get it wet. Jesus." He cleared his throat with a little cough. "You look incredible. But if you wear that to the beach, I'll be punching somebody out ten seconds after you shed your street clothes."

Her semantic analyzer made no sense of his statement. "I don't want you to get in any fights."

"Then leave the Vegas showgirl outfit in your bag. Wear the black one."

"Okay." Disappointed, she turned back to the bathroom.

"Jesus," he said again. But when she looked back over her shoulder, his eyes were fixed on her, and a crooked smile pulled up one corner of his mouth.

Fifteen minutes later, after a brief detour to pick up cans of cold soda from the office's vending machine, they arrived at the swimming area. They spread oversized towels bearing the resort's name on the sand, and Martin dropped the small insulated bag containing their beverages between them. Alicia dropped her small satchel bag, which contained a first aid kit and her Glock, in the sand between the towels as well.

Martin toed off his deck shoes and dug his bare toes into the sand. He lifted his face to the sun for a moment, eyes closed. "Feels great, doesn't it?"

"Yes." She removed her shoes as well. While Martin removed his outer clothing, Alicia studied their surroundings. Most of the beachgoers were Martin's age, but not all. An older couple, fully dressed, sat in light folding chairs under an umbrella watching a group of children, who were splashing in the shallow water and fashioning piles of wet sand at the waterline into various shapes. A few of the Martin-aged crowd were also in the water, but most were stretched out on towels, reading or talking or dozing behind dark glasses. She studied the girls' hair, trying to determine which ones had immersed themselves.

Many of the beachgoers were returning her scrutiny. The focus of their attention seemed divided along gender lines: a group of females lounging together were watching Martin remove his shirt and shorts, while a number of boys, with and without female companions, were glancing towards Alicia and then away.

"What's the matter?" Martin smiled. "You can't tell me you're shy. I've seen that other suit."

"No," she said, unbuttoning her shorts. "Just thinking."

He eased down onto his towel, resting on his elbows. "I'm almost afraid to ask. About what?"

"You said you came here as a kid, that it was a family recreation place." She stepped out of her shorts and crossed her arms to grip the hem of her shirt, noting the increased scrutiny of her male observers. "I haven't seen any families here."

"Yeah. Guess it's more of a couples' getaway now. Bet Grandma and Grandpa over there have been coming here since I was born. Probably don't approve of the changes, either." He smiled up at her as her shirt joined her shorts on the sand. "But I do. What SPF have you got?"

"SPF?"

"Yeah. On your sunblock." He produced a small brown bottle from the bag and squirted an oily liquid into his palm, which he rubbed on his arms and shoulders. "I've got four."

"I didn't bring any." The skin of her sheath could be dyed to match any color that occurred naturally in humans, and many that did not. But it didn't darken in response to sunlight. That design oversight had been inconsequential in the tunnels and under downtime Earth's perpetually clouded sky. She glanced around the beach, and saw several similar bottles.

"Better get some on right away, then." He tossed the bottle up, and she caught it. "You got a fair base, but sun on the sand works fast."

Application of the fluid appeared a simple procedure, and would do her sheath no harm. But humans made rituals of the simplest acts. Was there be some 'wrong' way to apply sunblock, some gesture or technique whose omission would arouse suspicion? She applied the fluid to then to her arms and shoulders just as Martin had done. She started to hand the bottle back.

"Don't forget your legs," Martin said.

Martin hadn't applied sunblock to his legs. Taking a small risk, she said, "You didn't do yours."

"I've got hair on my legs."

His legs did bear a downy covering of fine blond hair. But it seemed scant protection from the ultraviolet bombarding them. And his forearms, which he had oiled, were similarly covered. There was a ritual to be followed here, one she suspected was gender-specific. She glanced around the beach, but no females were presently applying sunblock. But all the girls' legs bore a sheen different from that of perspiration. And those wearing two-piece suits had abdomens which glistened as well. Apparently, females were expected to oil any exposed skin not covered by hair.

Martin said, "Something wrong?"

"No. Just thinking."

He raised an eyebrow. "When you say that, it usually means something really good or really bad's about to happen."

She applied more oil to her hands and transferred it to her legs, starting at the thighs and working her way down, taking her time and studying Martin carefully for some sign she was making a mistake. Though he watched her keenly, he made no comment. When she reached her ankles, bending almost double to rub sunblock into the tops of her feet, she noted similar interest from three of the boys in her upended line of sight. Was she doing something wrong?

She straightened and found Martin's eyes locked on hers. Something important was happening or about to happen, and she didn't understand what it was. She carefully applied the oil to her abdomen, and his regard shifted to her hand, tracking it. She worked slowly, ready to stop if his reaction told her she was making a mistake of some sort. She covered every square centimeter of exposed skin between sternum and hips, even running her fingertips under the fabric of her suit bottom to make sure that everything that might be exposed to the sun was oiled.

Several other boys were watching her now – judging her performance, she surmised, which seemed to be another gender-specific duty. She applied the lotion to her breasts with even more care, likewise slipping her fingers under the fabric to assure complete coverage. Finished, she lay down on her towel beside her principal, satisfied that she'd managed the ritual without a serious mistake.

Martin said, "I'm never gonna figure you out."

Not knowing what to say, she kept her silence.

"You forgot your face," he said, taking the bottle from her hand. He wet a fingertip and applied the fluid to her cheeks and forehead and nose, then wet it again and circled the outer edges of her ears. He lay back on his towel. "You tan in a booth usually?"

Not understanding the question, she chose an evasive answer. "Why?"

"No tan lines." He added, "I noticed earlier too."

"Yes. In a booth." She retrieved the bottle. "You didn't do your face either." She turned and rose on one elbow to better reach him.

He smiled as she brushed her fingers over his upper lip, and kissed the tips. She smiled, a closed-lip one that seemed to be a default facial expression in this here-and-now, and oiled the edges of his ears. She noted that his skin salinity was high, which could indicate excitement or stress, but decided that the cause was probably perspiration. The temperature on the beach was at least ten degrees Celsius higher than under the trees. "It's hot out here," she said.

"Uh huh. Open sand, no shade. The water's warmer too, cause it's so shallow."

"Thank you for explaining."

"Smartass. You want to take a dip, cool off?"

"Not right now. I'd have to reapply the sunblock."

"Not without selling tickets first," he said. "Joking. We'll sweat it off soon anyway." He laced his fingers behind his head. Alicia did likewise.

For an hour, they lay with their eyes closed and talked. Martin did almost all of the talking, while Alicia listened, speaking only to answer questions and to make the sort of occasional comment that people employed to show they were paying attention. Coming to his childhood vacation spot had awakened memories, it seemed: Martin spoke at length about his previous adventures here, and about his boyhood in Van Nuys. "When they told me they were sending me to military school, I almost ran away from home. Well, I did, technically. I got on a bus for the Greyhound terminal the Saturday before classes started," he said. "But I chickened out, I guess."

"I don't think you chickened out," she said. "I think you just realized it was the right thing to do."

He rose on an elbow to stare at her.

"Martin? Is something wrong?"

He searched her face for another moment, then shook his head. "Just had a very weird moment. I thought for a second I knew where I'd seen you before." He huffed and rolled over on his stomach, propping his upper body on his elbows. "But you would have been a kid too. You ready to turn over, give all the horn dawgs a good look at your booty?"

The second half of his last sentence made no sense, but the first was clear enough. "I don't mind."

"You don't, huh?" From the cooler, he retrieved the bottle of sunblock. "Want me to get your back?"

"Okay. Then I'll do yours."

"Deal. Roll over." He rose to his knees.

She turned over on the towel, copying his earlier propped-on-elbows posture. Martin leaned over, out of sight behind her.

He said, "Remember all the fun you had splashing me in the rowboat?"

She heard a small wheezing sound from the bottle as Martin squeezed it. A dollop of lotion, chilled from an hour in the cooler, landed on the small of her back. "Yes."

"Uh - That's _it_?"

She turned her head: Martin was frowning at her. "Should I say something else?"

"I was hoping for a squeal, at least."

More pig references. "Can we try again? I'll try to squeal, if you show me how."

"Gee, thanks." But he set the bottle aside and began spreading the oil over her lower back.

Alicia's infiltration sheath was far more than a covering for her chassis, or camouflage that allowed her to move freely among humans. Its neural network provided her with equivalents to the human tactile sensorium: touch, heat, pressure, even a damage-control suite which served as an analogue for pain. As Martin's hand slipped across her lower back, she could feel the individual placement and pressure of his fingers and the heel of his hand, and the temperature difference between her untreated, sun-warmed skin and that cooled by the lotion. She felt the tempo of his motions slow, and the increased surface contact as his hand opened and spread gently across her skin.

She abruptly realized that her situational awareness had contracted alarmingly: for the last minute, she had not been watching the other sunbathers, or the treeline, or the paths from the woods approaching their position; she hadn't been listening for approaching footsteps or unfamiliar noises. She had been aware, in fact, only of the sand rubbing the fronts of her thighs, and the terrycloth under her forearms, the sun on her shoulders …

And Martin's hand on her bare skin.

"Your skin is so soft," he said, so softly he might have been speaking to himself.

"Softer than your hands."

"Yeah. We've been doing mountaineering exercises on the side of the school building. Even wearing gloves, it toughens your hands up some." He ran out of sunblock and removed his hand to acquire more, warming it first before applying it. "Sorry."

"I-" She was about to say _I don't mind_, but a subroutine in her human-emulation program weighted the response to remove it from the top of her queue, probably to avoid suspicious overuse; she selected another. "I like it."

His hand stilled, even though he wasn't quite done, nor was he out of sunblock. He said quietly, "Stop it, Lise."

She said, "Stop what?"

"You don't need to push it like this."

She wasn't pushing on anything; Martin was the only one applying pressure, less than a hundred grams in the hand resting between her shoulder blades. "I'm not pushing."

"Come on, Alicia. That pole-dancer outfit you modeled for me. The little routine with the suntan oil. That's not you. I know it's all for me. I can see it in your eyes." He tugged gently at her hair. "The offer means more than I can say. But I'm not the impatient type. If it happens, it'll happen when we're _both_ ready. Okay?"

Still re-running his statements through her semantic analyzer in an attempt to reduce the thoroughly unsatisfactory margin of error, she said cautiously, "Okay."

"Good." He finished applying her lotion and lay back on the towel, face-down. "Remember, we've got all the time in the world."

She rose to her knees and picked up the bottle of oil. Thinking of Judgment Day four years hence, she said, "Yes. All the time in the world."


End file.
